Teachers of Selflessness and Generosity

Why do I write? To open myself and others to the threads of connection between ourselves and the natural world that surrounds us, holds us, contains us, forms us, and IS us. I sometimes have to remind myself of this.

Alex (my husband) and I were building a fire in the front yard the other evening. Mostly to clean up the yard. We had accumulated small pieces of cardboard (I save the larger pieces for sheet mulching) and a half years worth of broken pecan limbs. If you have a pecan tree in your yard, or have known one in the past, you very well may be familiar with the brittleness of their limbs. They shed easily in strong winds, which makes for a good burn pile once in awhile.

So here we were gathering the broken limbs to burn that were piled beneath the two giant pecan trees over the course of the year, and I notice how flakey and “cratered” the trees bark is. I notice little holes where insects have burrowed into the tree trunk. I notice Resurrection Fern, laying crispy and dormant o…