TRICKLE TURNS TO FLOW

Mmmm...today is March 23. We've had six straight days of temperatures in the 70-85 degree range. The snow is nearly gone and places that usually wet my feet up to my ankles are bone dry. There is no doubt in my mind that the climate is changing and I didn't need Al Gore to tell me either. Just keep watching NOVA and Discovery, and the changing habitats of the Arctic and Antartic tell the whole story loud and clear. We tapped our sugar maples just two weeks ago and already the run is finished. Our years harvest is 1/3 of the usual sap run. But this year we tapped 2 birches and have been drinking birch sap which is touted as a spring tonic in Russia and the Nordic areas.  We Americans are so focused on consumer use of resources that we don't even think about trees as a food and medicine resource right in our own back yards. Birch sap, if you research it on line, is useful for balancing blood sugars, cholesterol, blood pressure, treating inflammation, helping the body release unnecessary fluids, clearing grit from the liver and kidneys and providing unusual protiens and trace minerals that support a glowing immune system. I also discovered Chaga tea which is helpful in detering the growth of cancer. I'm having a serious love affair with all things Birch and where the sugar maple run is done...my Birch sap continues to run...and I'm along for the ride. The intense heat has made hiking a little treacherous as water is flowing beneath the ice pack and that is thin enough to step through so every step is an adventure...a good motto for living life fully. The usual thin trickle of March waters is a veritable flow this year and as I walk and sit beside the streams and brooks of my habitat, I say prayers for the changes ahead. I fear a hot dry summer because healthy life needs good moisture and our whole humanity depends on water for our survival.

But when I think of trickle...I think of my sister Beth, whose name in the Druidic alphebet means Birch...
she left this life as a beautiful 26 year old with a whole life of unfullfilled dreams ahead of her. The story is long and sad...and her surgeon , when she was in the original trauma of surviving a very bad car crash,   gave her a stuffed Owl as a get well gift. He became important to her as she made her 4 1/2 year journey
from a hospital bed to her creator. She named him Trickle...after the tears that made a constant stream down her pretty cheeks. My Mom still has Trickle. And while sitting with my Mom, after her fall, I got into needle felting and upon felting a Northern Sawet Owl, I then began making tiny baby owls and giving them away. There is magic in metaphor and some how my brain has made a link between Trickle, my owl making, birch sap and Chaga(a fungus that grows on birches), Beth and birch and healing a deep core wound that has prevented me from being a full participant in my own life. What's important here isn't the details of the story so much as the thread of perception that has connected me in my family tree to my sister Beth and the passion I have for Birches...lithe and graceful, sweet and flexible...Beth and Birch and simmering sweet saps of spring have all opened my eyes to the meaning of Trickle becoming Flow. Now to trust...and hope for a thirst quenching beginning to a new and full participation in this un-frozen being