After work one day, earlier in October, I meandered through a local trail to see what I could forage. It was a blustery day with off and on rain and intermittent clear skies. Whenever the seasons begin to make their shift, there's a sort of battle that goes on in the sky. It's an odd micro climate I live in. The temperature, wind and rain can vary quite dramatically from where I live to where my job is located, a mere 7 miles away. The buttes, small valleys, dense forest patches create pockets of strange isolated weather happenings. One of the many reasons I love it out here...

I gathered up what I stumbled upon. Originally I was looking verbascum thapsus, mullein. I've always been oddly drawn to that plant and I was hoping to find some to begin forging a relationship with it. Mullein loves disturbed rocky soils and despite the fact that I was in prime mullein growing territory, I found none! I did however find a surprising amount of young yarrow leaf shooting up and the always abundant plantain. Rosehips aplenty too.

I plan to make a healing salve with the plantain and yarrow, once dried.

Along this very same trail, I found a sun bleached crow skeleton. After months of seeing him just sit there, I finally took him home. His skull was perfectly intact as well as some wing bones. As an animist, I believe that his spirit still resides in his bones and over time, we have developed an interesting relationship. One day, I walked into the kitchen to find him exactly like this...

Silenced with chicken skin and fat. He's my kitchen table companion, often watching as I process herbs, pull cards and taking food scraps as offerings. He's always hungry and a little greedy. He is a surprisingly and both unsurprisingly communicative and active spirit to work with. One of his wing bones resides in my bone throwing set and he's always sure to make his opinions known.

October started off ridiculously glorious, almost alarmingly glorious, here in my city. Bright warm days, golden sun, sun glasses, crop tops and shorts still an option. Warm weekends spent in debaucherous revelry were snatched away from me too quickly. But, all good and beautiful things do inevitably come to an end.

The rains came alright though, they came just fine. When the rains don't come, or they're late it worries me. Mt. Hood sat all greyish for weeks... and then boom! The next day he was covered in a white blanket. It poured heavy those last few weeks of October and through this early November. A second spring as I like to call it. Everything becomes green again after the dryness of summer, moisture loving plants come back to life...

And then darkness descends. 4pm sunsets, living in a perpetual state of gloaming and artificial light when it's too dark too see in your home. I am exalted in the sun, it gives me a joy I can't describe. But, it's an odd comfort this season and despite my moaning and groaning, I take full advantage of what it has to offer: incubation, hibernation, introspection.

The Bear has been a figure in my dreams, in my divination, in the ashes of burned candles and wax. The mother with her offspring lurks in the forests of my dreamscapes... I stopped for a moment in a book store not too long ago, to take a peek into Ted Andrews book Animal Speak. He wrote of how the female bear goes to her den for the winter, the seed that she carries is nurtured in the darkness and in the spring, she emerges proudly with what she cultivated in incubation. This is what Bear is encouraging me to do, I believe. I listen.

My den is outfitted, my work has presented itself to me and I shall begin. Through dreams, through trance and speaking with spirit. The work never ends and it is always beginning.

Fall Foraging & Hungry Kitchen Crow

Arrival of Darkness & The Hibernating Bear

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