Blog – Page 2 – Susan J Tweit

Weathering Loneliness and Grief

Posted on April 5, 2020 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

I’ve been a widow for eight-and-a-half years. I midwifed the deaths of my husband and my mom in the same year, so I have experience living with loneliness and grief. But I can say honestly that I’ve never experienced the kind of lows of the past week. I felt the darkness coming beforehand—I’m intuitive and often, I get some sense of what’s coming my way. Sometimes I can use that wordless warning to prepare myself. Sometimes not. This time, I wasn’t successful.

After The Guy, his dog, and the horses pulled out a week ago, headed north, I found myself in tears all the time. Normally, I’m resilient and able to maintain a positive attitude. Not last week. Reading the news, responding to emails and texts from friends and family, learning of people I knew infected with COVID-19, an elderly friend dead from the virus—everything set me off.

It’s not that I was alone. I’m an introvert, so solo time is actually soothing for me. As I wrote in my forthcoming memoir, Bless the Birds: Living With Love in a Time of Dying:

As an introvert living in a body studded with what feels like hundreds of tiny antennae, I am easily overwhelmed by the stimuli of my fellow humans: our voices and words, the noise of our devices, our volatile emotions, and the electricity of our metabolic energy.

No, what had me in tears was simply the overload. I feel the world so strongly: emotions and other sensory information come to me as physical sensations. My body feels battered. That way of sensing the world is very much a gift, leading to rich understanding of humans and our ways, sometimes difficult premonitions, and other kinds of learning.

But it comes at a heavy cost. If the emotional and sensory stimuli build up within me, they’re literally toxic, causing what might be diagnosed as anxiety, but what I experience as acceleration of my heart-rate, erratic nervous system and electrical pulses, and general disruptions to my inner stability. Those symptoms overload my immune system, causing the potentially deadly organ impairment of my Lupus and other autoimmune conditions.

Trying to listen and be empathetic without allowing each day’s swirling whirlwind of stimuli to become toxic has always been a challenge. It’s even more so now–not just for me, for all of us.

Normally, I manage by writing, spending a lot time by myself or in the company of a very few others, and being physically active outside: walking, hiking, digging invasive weeds, renovating houses, or riding. And also—and this last is critical—by touch. I am a “touchy-feely” person: I hug others; I hold hands, kiss cheeks.

I depend on the balm of that physical contact. When I am frazzled and struggling to keep my emotional and mental balance, the warmth of another’s hand, the press of a dog’s muzzle on my leg, or the soothing rhythm of a horse’s muscles invariably help me settle. Touch with other mammals is grounding. I can feel my systems stabilizing and harmonizing with theirs.

We talk about “gentling” horses or dogs—and even people—with touch. Research supports the soothing and calming effect of physical touch on our emotions, our metabolisms, and our overall health, body, mind, and spirit.

Before The Guy, his dog, and the horses came into my life last fall, I met my need for that sort of “therapeutic touch” by interacting with my close circle of friends, my family, and their four-legged companions. Plus regular massages and monthly sessions from my Doctor of Oriental Medicine, Ehrland Truitt, who can feel how my body’s systems are working simply by “listening” with his intuitive and sensitive touch.

In close touch with family: on the water with two of my smart, generous, and beautiful nieces, Sienna Bryant and Heather Roland.

Now, in this era of adhering to social-distancing and shelter-in-place as critical ways to control the spread of Coronavirus, I am truly alone. I cannot hug my friends, or even shake hands with the tire guys who dealt with my flat tire yesterday. I have no dog to snuggle with when I’m blue. I am profoundly alone, and after only one week, starved for physical touch. I’ve struggled to maintain my emotional and mental balance.

I realize that I am fortunate to be healthy (in my own slightly impaired way!) and not isolated or dying in a hospital or nursing home, and to have a safe and comfortable place to live. I am grateful for the daily contact-at-a-distance with friends, family, and The Guy. I’m grateful, too, for all of those who are working every day to make sure the rest of us are safe, meeting our essential needs for food and other services, and heroically tending to the sick and dying.

I will survive this time of profound loneliness, this cell-deep grief about what is happening with us humans and this Earth, the blue planet we call home. And I can’t wait until I can hug someone in gratitude for the gift of simply being here, now.

Be well, my friends!

Living in the Light During the Coronavirus Disease Pandemic

Posted on March 29, 2020 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

When I first read the CDC guidelines about who is at highest risk for severe illness with Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), I admit to feeling both scared and pissed off. In fact, I am pretty sure I uttered a short and pithy phrase I won’t repeat on this blog. (Suffice to say that it contained several four-letter words, and none of them were “love.”)

I’m one of those most at risk for serious complications from COVID-19: I’m over 60 (that factor has now been raised to over 65, but I’m so close it makes no difference). I live with the chronic illness Lupus plus a small alphabet-soup array of other autoimmune conditions. I have lung issues from back when I was seriously ill in my 20s. I also have some heart-muscle damage and an arrhythmia that causes my heart to occasionally decide to do some jazzy improvising like, “Bada-bada-bada-bada-Bing Boom! Boom! Boom!”. And I have a “compromised” immune system. (I prefer to say my immune system is “sensitive,” but that’s probably splitting hairs.)

I’ve lived well for decades with my own particular and challenging health, and truly, as I wrote in my memoir, Walking Nature Home, I’ve learned thrive. I’m generally healthy: I don’t get sick often; I’ve never been hospitalized; I don’t take any medications. I walk or hike or ride at least five miles a day; I eat well; and I’m strong enough to heave a full bucket of wet horse manure into the dumpster, and to generally be stubborn about doing things myself that I might be wise to let others do for me (which sometimes annoys The Guy!).

Still… the CDC is right: I am at higher risk of serious illness from COVID-19. So I am following the guidelines: I wash my hands so often they are cracked and soak up lots of lotion, I practice social distancing and avoid crowded places; I am sheltering in place and staying home except for essential trips to town (for groceries) or to nearby open-space preserves (for Vitamin N, time in nature, which is as important to me as food). I keep my surroundings clean. And now that The Guy and his dog, and the horse-herd have all headed back to their spring home, I live alone.

I won’t let the COVID-19 pandemic degrade the quality of my days. I refuse to succumb to fear, or turn my back on the world. I read the news, but I don’t obsess. I’m not hoarding toilet paper or anything else. (If I was going to hoard, it would be chocolate, green chile sauce, and Stranahan’s whiskey!) Despite my concerns about the virus and finances and what will happen with book publishing and whether my friends and family will all weather this–my brother has asthma, one niece was exposed and fortunately tested negative… Despite all that, I refuse to panic.

I don’t mean to minimize the seriousness of this. People are dying; scores upon scores are ill. Heroic first-responders, medical providers, and other healthcare and spiritual-care folks are stepping up and into the metaphorical line of fire every day. Grocery store cashiers and stockers, delivery folks, and all manner of others are going about their work so the rest of us can shelter safely in place. I am heart-broken about the deaths and illnesses, the displacement of lives and jobs and education for so many. And I am grateful for all of those who are working and volunteering, who are living in the Light of courage and compassion and simple kindness.

We can all do that, especially the simple kindness part. We can smile, say hello (from a proper distance or virtually); we can check on each other and really listen through the fear and anxiety and outright paranoia. We can support local businesses, sew masks, donate supplies; we can offer to help those who are stuck being homebound. We can go about our days with generosity and goodness no matter what.

Because we need to live in the Light as much as we can. Panic and hoarding will not help; acting as a community and helping each other will.

As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his inaugural address in 1933, the depths of The Great Depression,

This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself–nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

And the only way to work through that fear is to unfreeze ourselves from our collective panic and reach for each other’s hands (keeping our proscribed social distance!) and offer support. Listen, sympathize, offer help, sew masks, wash our hands, don’t go out if we’re sick, smile, get outside, buy groceries or books or whatever is needed, shovel a driveway, walk a dog…

And say “thank you.” Thank you for your service, for being my neighbor, for delivering my mail, for stocking the shelves and staffing the clinics. Thank you for comforting my friend, testing my niece, transporting sick people to the hospital, for burying the dead…

Remember too, to nurture yourself. Do what soothes you, eat good food, get enough sleep, look for beauty and moments of joy. Notice and take heart from the coming of spring: the birdsong, flowers blooming, the first bees and butterflies; life continuing despite all.

Thank you all for being who you are, and for whatever you do to live in the Light in these frightening times. Blessings from me to each of you…

Living with Love in a Time of Dying

Posted on February 27, 2020 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

That’s the new subtitle of my forthcoming memoir, Bless the Birds*, a phrase that came to me this winter when I realized, as I write in the Preface, “The personal is the political.” Meaning my story of living with heart open through times more difficult than I had ever imagined is directly applicable to all of us now, as we do our best to live with hope rather than despair through what seems the death of civility, the death of our planet, and the death of our democracy. Not to mention the threat of a Coronavirus pandemic.

How do we avoid being paralyzed by grief and fear in these times?

It’s not easy, but it is possible:

This story is about living in a time of dying. It is both prayer and love song, an invitation to walk in the light of what we love, especially when times are hard or heartbreaking. To open our hearts and go forward with as much grace as we can through life’s changes. To honor our cell-deep connection to all of the other lives with whom we share this planet. To celebrate the miracle of simply being, our capacity for love that is both gift and salvation.

How can we rise above and be our best?

Walk in light of what we love, rather than what we fear. That means reminding ourselves—often—what it is that we love. We we care about, what we appreciate and can celebrate about ourselves and our lives, and about life on this amazing animate planet.

As is opening our hearts and living our days with as much grace as is possible. Consciously looking for the beauty inherent in each day, whether that is a flower blooming inside in winter, a coyote glimpsed trotting through a grassland, a fragment of bird song, a painting, piece of music, or dance; an unexpected smile or the touch of a warm hand…

And staying connected to our community, near and far. Not just the people who are most like us and easiest to love, but all of humanity, and all of the species who together make Earth the green and living exception to the vast silence of space.

You’ll notice the repetition of the word love, the quality which I think is the greatest gift our species has to offer Life. Not just romantic love or intense physical desire, the genuine attachment we humans feel for each other, for other species, and for this living world as a whole.

How can we thrive, despite the convulsive changes happening to the world we love?

I offer this personal story as an example of something positive we can do: live with love, and “lean in” to nature, the community that birthed our species. I see love as humans’ greatest gift to this Earth, and one we need to cultivate—especially now. I bless the birds because the sudden and profoundly unnerving appearance of Richard’s avian hallucinations afforded us time to learn how to walk his journey to its end with love. To be reminded of the kindness and generosity intrinsic in our fellow humans. To take heart and sustenance from the miracle of life on this glorious planet, challenges and all. To live fully in a time when life seems especially hard and heart-breaking.

When we find ourselves curling inward in grief and fear, we need to remember our species’ best gift: love.

Living in light of what we love can carry us through. That takes practice, conscious cultivation of being present with compassion and an open heart. Simply being here, hearts open to the flow of life.

Blessings to you all!

*Bless the Birds: Living With Love in a Time of Dying, is due out from She Writes Press in a little over a year, April of 2021. It’s been a long journey, and I am excited to have this, my 13th book, on a path to publication at last.

A coyote from my neighborhood pack hunting the open space below my house at sunset…

A Love Story in Troubled Times

Posted on January 5, 2020 | by Susan Tweit | 4 Comments

With the world seeming to be heading into chaos once again, I find myself searching for anything positive or cheering. Any good news, any happy ending, any ray of light in what feels like gathering darkness. I’m offering this love story in that vein, as a sign that goodness still exists, and miracles still happen. I’m not going to identify the lovers out of respect for one’s desire for privacy. You’ll probably guess the identity of the other; that’s okay.

Once upon a time, a writer quite reluctantly left her cozy home in the Southwest to travel north to Wyoming and teach at a retreat center. She grumbled as she drove, not because going to Wyoming wasn’t a joy, but because she was close to finishing a book project, and she didn’t want to leave the writing just then. But she had promised to lead a seminar for another friend who had to bow out, so our writer honored that commitment, if grumpily.

At sunset on her first day on the road, as she crossed the state line into Wyoming, the writer’s mood lifted. Looking at the wild valley around her, she realized that she needed to throw open the walls she had carefully built since her husband had died nearly eight years before. In particular, she needed to find a place to live with more open landscapes around her, and fewer people nearby, unlike the condo where she had lived for the past year.

When she curled up in her sleeping bag in her car that night, our writer surfed a real estate site on the internet, checking what was for sale in the area she was thinking of. Within minutes, she saw a house that looked just perfect for her–clearly in need of some love, but she wasn’t bothered by that. The asking price was over her budget, but she noticed the house had been on the market for months, so she figured she might be able to get it for less. Before she drifted off to sleep, she sent an email to her friend, a real estate agent, asking her opinion of the house and suggesting an appointment to view it when writer returned home the next month.

The next morning, our writer was feeling buoyant. As she drove through southern Wyoming’s sagebrush country with its long views and immense blue skies, she said out loud to the universe, “If I’m buying a house, it’s time to bring a dog back into my life. I’ll take the next one that comes along.”

She hadn’t had a dog since her Great Dane had died in 2007. Just over a year after the big grief of losing that beloved Big Dog came the brain cancer and caregiving years that had eventually set the writer on a solo path in life. For years after midwifing both her mother and her husband through their deaths she was simply too drained to be able to commit to any relationship, even the easy companionship of a dog.

“It’s finally time,” she said to herself as she drove toward distant mountain ranges, counting grazing pronghorn antelope and soaring golden eagles. And she felt good.

Late that afternoon she parked at the ranch where she was teaching. When she got out of her car and stretched her stiff back, a distinguished older dog, his red muzzle gone white, ambled across the dusty lot, sniffed her ankles, and presented himself for attention. She scratched his back at the base of his wagging stub tail, and then moved on to rub his ears. He groaned, sat on her feet, and looked up at her with big brown eyes.

“You’re a sweetie!” our writer said to the dog. “But you belong to someone already. You’re not mine.” He lifted his lips in a doggy grin, wagged his stub-tail harder, and ambled off.

A few hours later in the dining hall, the writer was chatting with some of the participants in her seminar when the dog’s person walked up and introduced himself: “I’m [we’ll call him “the guy”] and we almost met 30 years ago.” She turned to answer, and her heart stopped. The man wore his wildly curling dark-turned-silver hair in a stubby pony tail, his nicely muscled body in a plaid shirt and jeans. He tilted his head to look at her through the close-up lenses in his bifocals when she spoke, his brown eyes magnified and his body attentive, as if he was listening with his very cells. Plop! Her heart fell right at the toes of his dusty cowboy boots. She doesn’t remember now what she said, but she remembers the distinctive mixture of terror, annoyance–this is not my life plan!–and excitement she felt.

She went to sleep in her cozy cabin that night arguing with herself. She was quite happy with her solo existence, had no interest in a relationship, and had her life arranged comfortably, thank you very much. As she said the last out loud, our writer was quite sure she could hear the universe laughing.

The week went by, the writer spent her days writing, hiking, paddle-boarding, and riding the ranch’s horses. (The guy was involved with the horse program, which she told herself firmly had nothing to do with her choosing to ride–she simply missed the long-ago days when she had ridden often, both for her botany fieldwork and for pleasure on her own horses.) In the evenings, she taught her seminars, with the guy and his gentlemanly dog perched on a couch front and center in the room.

By the end of the week, our writer and the guy had managed to sit together at a few meals, but since they were both working, time for conversation was almost non-existent. Still, she had learned their lives had nearly intersected many times over the decades, they shared many mutual friends in the writing world, and many interests. He had a varied and intriguing background, including science fieldwork, publishing, horse-tending, and a new interest in the spiritual side of palliative care and hospice. Their conversations showed her that the guy was a wide reader and a deep thinker, with an interest in reconnecting humans with the wild, which they both thought was the source of sacredness and spirituality. He was just four months older than she was, with deep roots in the landscapes she called home too.

When they parted at the end of the week, she learned that he hugged as thoroughly as he listened. She drove off to spend several weeks working in a nearby national park, torn between excitement and terror. He spent the next month hunting in the high country of Colorado. They talked on the phone when they could, their long conversations ranging from what “home” meant to methods of dealing with invasive weeds, and from favorite musicians to what they had learned from other loves in their lives, to the age-old question of whether red chile is better than green chile. (That last is the only thing they disagreed on.)

That fall, the guy came to visit for a weekend so they could hear a writer they both knew read from her new book. They hiked, cooked, took walks, and talked. A lot.

Two nights stretched to four, and when the guy left, our writer surprised herself and him by saying, “I love you.” The words were a gift, she explained; he wasn’t required to respond at all. She just wanted him to know he was loved, whether or not he felt the same. He nodded. After he called her that night to say he had made it home safely, he called back. “I forgot to say something,” he said. “What?” “I love you.” Tears formed in her eyes. “It’s been hard for me to say my whole life,” he added. “But I’ll try to remember to say it every day.” She swiped at drops running down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said. “I love you too.”

The writer and the guy are figuring out how to interweave their respective lives and to use this gift of unexpected love for good in the world. If we only listen to the news, these difficult times seem so short of goodness and love. But those qualities are all around us, and we all spread them every day. The truth is: love–not necessarily romantic love, but the genuine attachment we feel for each other, for other species, and for this living world as a whole–is what sustains us in and through hard times. Hence this story, which I offer as a ray of light and a reminder that love lives, thrives, and even surprises us even in or perhaps specially in, hard times.

Sometimes when she is falling asleep at night, snuggled close to the guy and the dog, our writer thinks she hears the universe laughing softly. And she reminds herself to be grateful for the miracle of love returning to her life. Also to be very specific in future when she asks the universe for anything. She only asked for a dog. She got the dog all right–plus his guy, and the guy’s horses. She wants to you know that while she is still surprised, even a bit stunned by the suddenness of the change in her carefully ordered life, she is not complaining. At all.

Giving Thanks: Gratitude Practice

Posted on December 1, 2019 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

Gratitude is good for us. Brain research shows that simply being grateful releases neurotransmitters that act like dopamine in our brains, making us feel good, and boosting our overall health.

New findings show that practicing gratitude actually rewires our brains to be more altruistic, activating areas of the brain that reward our generosity by increasing the neurotransmitters that signal pleasure and also goal attainment. In other words, the more we find ways to be grateful, the more generous we are and the more we give others a reason to be grateful. That feedback loop gives us more happiness and satisfaction.

The hook is that we can’t just be grateful over one meal, one day a year. We have to make it a habit to remember specific things we are grateful for on a regular basis. And consciously act in generous ways, too.

Those who have read this blog for a while know that Thanksgiving marks a difficult time of year for me because my husband, Richard Cabe, died of brain cancer a few days after Thanksgiving in 2011, when he was just 61. His death followed that of my mom, who died in February of that year. I midwifed both deaths at home, as each wished, with the help of family, friends, and hospice care.

It’s been eight years. Still, I tend to fold inward in late November, not so much from grief, but from anticipatory anxiety. Those two deaths catapulted me into a few very difficult years as I dug myself out of what seemed like an impossible amount of debt, and invented a life that was happy, sustainable, and satisfying.

As an antidote to the trauma of those events and the blues that stem from my muscle memories, I consciously practice gratitude and generosity at this time of year (not only now–I’m just more aware of it at this season). Here’s what I’m most grateful for right now, in no particular order:

Casa Alegría, in our surprise Thanksgiving snowstorm

My new house, which I call Casa Alegría, “House of Joy” in Spanish. It’s been through foreclosure and needs some serious love, but it’s such a beautiful space with great light and open spaces inside and out, plus it feels sheltered in its little hollow. It offers both refuge and expansive views, a nest that gives me a wider perspective on the world, both literally and figuratively.

The great room, with its two-story-high ceiling of tongue-and-groove pine, sun-space opening onto the nearby wild, and The Beast, the pellet stove that supplements the sun’s heat.

The loft, with my desk tucked into the south-facing dormer with it’s sixty-mile view all the way to central New Mexico’s Manzano Mountains.

The kitchen, all warm-colored pine cabinets and cozy beamed ceiling. (There’s a hummingbird nest in the New Mexico locust tree out the window.)

The master bedroom with its sky blue accent wall, and a door leading directly outside to a little covered porch facing east toward the greenbelt below the house.

I’ve just gotten started on the work Casa Alegría needs to feel like a healthy home, beginning with painting a few of the all-white walls in shades of sage green, pale terracotta, dawn yellow, and a soft sky blue. And replacing aged light fixtures with new, energy-efficient ones. The more substantive work will begin this winter, when the uninsulated garage door that no longer shuts completely is replaced with a new, insulated one. (That door not sealing explains the money I spent sterilizing the mouse-infected attic above the garage.) Then I’ll have insulation blown into the attic, which has none after I disposed of the old mouse-pee-crusted fiberglass batts. Plus gutters added to the front portal and the north- and east-facing roofs.

Then comes replacing all of the openable windows and a few of the exterior doors with more efficient ones that will actually seal as well as letting in more light. Followed by stabilizing an exterior post or two, a tricky process that involves putting jacks under overhanging roofs and carefully removing a post, digging a foundation and pouring a concrete base, and then replacing the post using plates and bolts instead of simply nails.

All of which sounds like a lot of work, but is nothing compared to the two years of starting in the basement and working my way upwards re-building the Cody house!

Badger in his Santa Fe-styling winter coat!

Another thing I’m particularly grateful for is the company of a charming canine caballero (gentleman), Badger, the 11-year-old Vizsla in the photo above. Badger has been visiting for the last two weeks while his guy was away on a road trip. In his own polite way, Badger insists on two long walks a day–we usually do three miles or more–on the roads and trails around the house. He also insists on playtime when I’ve worked too long, usually by sitting up on the couch and howling until I come downstairs from the loft!

Badger and his person, DeWitt, wandered into my life when I was teaching at Ring Lake Ranch in September. That deepening friendship is another thing I’m grateful for. DeWitt generously spent a week here helping me move. He insisted on playtime too, so we spent a night relaxing at the hot springs at Ojo Caliente, and then played hooky for a whole afternoon exploring part of the old Camino Real with DeWitt’s sister, Lori, and her friend Allison, and their horses. It’s been so long since I had horses in my life that I had entirely forgotten the joy of simply riding a trail for a few hours without any agenda or schedule.

And that’s another thing I’m grateful for: I’m relearning joy and play. I have been pushing myself so hard for so long that I have neglected the practice of stepping back from relentless do-ing into a more loving and trusting be-ing. It’s time for me to re-learn be-ing and letting my heart guide me.

I’m also grateful for all of you, and the love and compassion you offer the world.

What are you grateful for?

Isostatic Rebound: Recovering Wildness

Posted on October 20, 2019 | by Susan Tweit | 2 Comments

North Park, one the Colorado-Wyoming border

isostatic rebound n. The slow rise of continental crusts after thick ice sheets recede, and the crustal rocks are freed from their massive weight. Measured in thousands of years. Also called glacial isostatic adjustment.

Driving north to teach at Ring Lake Ranch just before Labor Day weekend, I experienced an odd phenomenon as I went over the ridge that bounds the northern edge of North Park in Colorado. It was evening and the sun was near to setting. The light over the hayfields was golden and the air still.

As I crossed the state line into Wyoming, I let out a long sigh and relaxed. It felt as if the world had expanded, the horizons stretching away. As if a spaciousness had opened both within me and without.

The landscape didn’t change much at the Colorado–Wyoming line, but something in me shifted. I couldn’t explain what happened exactly or what it meant, so I pressed on.

A little over a week later after I finished my gig at Ring Lake Ranch in Wyoming’s Wind River Range, I was on my way north to Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park to continue my long-term project of hand-digging invasive weeds. I stopped at a favorite spot on the northern shore of Lake Yellowstone, sat on a rock, and looked south across the wind-ruffled expanse of the lake at the wildest part of our nation’s oldest national park, the Thorofare Valley.

Yellowstone Lake with the peaks of the Absarokas on the left, and the gap of the Thorofare Valley in the far distance in the middle skyline.

I walked most of the length of that wild and remote valley on a multi-day, solo backpacking trip years ago. One noontime on that trek, I watched, fascinated, as a grizzly bear stalked a sandhill crane; on several nights, I woke to the sound of moose thrashing through willow thickets perilously close to my tent. I went several days without seeing another human. I sang a lot, and talked out loud to Sadie, the borrowed dog who accompanied me that week.

Looking across the lake last month, I remembered clearly how it felt to be on my own in some of the biggest wild in the lower 48 states, where I was constantly alert to the world around me, acutely aware that I was really just lunch for any one of the larger predators around, whether grizzly bears, mountain lions, or whomever. And that if anything happened to me, it was likely that I’d never be found.

I walked through those days in a state of mixed terror and exhilaration, alive in a way I only feel when I’m in the wild. Especially when I’m in the wild alone.

Looking across the lake with the feel of fall in the air, I realized that I need more wildness in my life. Over the decades of living with and loving Richard and Molly, I put the part of me which needs wilderness aside. Neither Richard nor Molly had or have the same deep need for time in the Big Wild as I do. Their idea of wilderness is that at the end of the day, there will be a microbrewery nearby with a good selection of Belgian-style ales, a hot shower, and a real bed.

We went on precisely one backpacking trip as a family, when Molly was four and we lived in West Virginia. It was my birthday, and I was determined to celebrate in the wildest place around, so I mapped out a three-day, two-night trip in the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area. It wouldn’t offer the solitude and rugged peaks of the northern Rockies, I knew, but I figured it would at least get us out to enjoy some wild nearby.

Richard and Molly were so miserable the first night that I took pity on us all: we packed out the next morning, stopping on the way home for a “real breakfast,” in Molly’s words, and “decent coffee” in the words of her dad. I tried again a few times over the years, but they simply didn’t love what I love about being out and away from humans.

So I put aside the part of me who craves time away from humanity, time to refresh and recharge in the wild, time to be fully awake and present in my moments because I am reminded vividly that I am just a meal for some larger organism… Over the years I forgot I even need that time.

Trail Lake at dawn from Ring Lake Ranch, with the peaks of the Wind River Range framed by the glacial valley.

Sitting on the shore of Yellowstone Lake on that breezy, chill day last month, I realized that what I felt when I crossed the state line into Wyoming was my spirit expanding to fit the wide spaces around me. Wyoming is roughly the same size as Colorado, where Richard and I lived for decades. But the human population of Colorado is over 5 million people, while Wyoming’s population is now less than 600,000 people, almost an order of magnitude smaller. With fewer people on the land, Wyoming is home to multitudes of pronghorn, sage grouse, elk, mountain lions, grizzly bears, and wolves. (Not to mention all of the smaller species, also more numerous in the absence humans.)

I thought about that realization as I worked up a sweat hand-digging knapweed for the next week and some, and as I visited friends in Cody. As I drove south toward home, my charming little condo in Santa Fe, I realized that I need more space and fewer people around me. I pondered what that would look like in Santa Fe.

I stopped on Beaver Rim with its long view of the Wind River Range and the Absarokas beyond, country that I know intimately from my fieldwork years before Richard and Molly came into my life. Taking in that long view of the country I have walked and ridden over, spending days far from roads and people, I impulsively used my phone to check the listings of houses for sale in Eldorado, a planned community with abundant open space and trails where the plains meet the mountains southeast of Santa Fe.

The view of the Wind River Range from Beaver Rim, a long fetch of open country.

Standing there on the ridge looking at houses for sale southeast of Santa Fe, I spotted a photo of a small, Northern-New Mexico-style house with a steeply-slanting metal roof, dormers, and a windowed sun-space for solar gain, tucked into a bit of a hollow, a bit apart from its neighbors, backed up on greenbelt. And I knew it was mine because my spirit expanded looking at the photos of that house, the way my soul opened up when I crossed the Wyoming line on the way north.

When I got home, I called my friend and real estate agent; we laughed about my realization and how much I’ve moved in the past five years. Then she arranged for me to see the place. In person, I could see it needed a good bit of TLC, but not so much it frightened me. And it still felt like mine, my place of wide skies and nighttime stars, of hikes or trail rides from the house into the nearby wild ridges. I’m scheduled to close on the place I call Casa Alegria on November 1st. I’ll have a little work done right away, and move in over the next week. I can hardly wait (even though I’ve been too busy to even pack a single box!)

Casa Alegría during an especially green and verdant spring

It’s as if I’m experiencing isostatic rebound after the losses of the last eight years: Mom, Richard, and Dad, the latter just a year ago. It’s been a slow process and a lot of searching, but I feel as if in that gradual rising as the immense weight of grief melts away, I am rediscovering myself. My heart and spirit are expanding into the space I am creating. And I like the me I am finding.

Where’s Susan? (Part 2)

Posted on September 22, 2019 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

The cloud-wreathed Teton Range from Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Since I left Ring Lake Ranch two weeks ago after a teaching sojourn that was simultaneously restorative and stimulating, Noche’s tires have hummed another 1,200 miles. First west to Grand Teton National Park, where I waved at that familiar wall of peaks as I drove by. (That’s the Tetons at the top of the post.) I didn’t stop to explore the familiar park because I was on a mission, headed north to Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone NP, where I spent a week working at eradicating non-native, invasive weeds.

For the past four summers, I’ve spent at least a week, usually three or four, in Yellowstone doing what I call my “weeding mission.” Which is about as much like weeding a garden as running a marathon is like my twice-weekly half-hour run on a treadmill. They’re both exercise, but running a marathon and eradicating invasive weeds are both long games: each requires patience, strategy, and as much mental toughness as physical toughness.

As I’ve written in other contexts, including this blog post for Off the Beaten Path, what leads a non-native plant to being called “invasive” is not a prejudice against immigrants:

Tens of thousands of non-native species call the United States home without causing harm. But not every species belongs everywhere. Invasives are those relative few who don’t play well with others, the species who behave badly, a detriment to us all.

The invasive weed I was digging in my time around Mammoth in Yellowstone is spotted knapweed, known to science as Centaurea maculosa, a perennial plant native to Eastern Europe. Here on this continent, spotted knapweed so does not play well with others that it wrecks the neighborhood. When spotted knapweed moves in, its roots exude poisons into the soil, “discouraging” (aka, killing) the roots of the native species around it, so that eventually, the knapweed takes over.

Spotted knapweed, Centuarea maculosa, quietly engaged in killing the Indian ricegrass and other native plants that songbirds and pollinators depend on, so its progeny can colonize the area.

But, you protest, it’s got such a pretty purple flower! Surely knapweed attracts bumblebees and other native bees, and perhaps its seeds are edible by wintering songbirds and small mammals, so it does actually benefit the community of the land?

It’s true that bumblebees do gather pollen from knapweed, though I’ve never seen other native bees visit the flowers. I don’t know if knapweed’s seeds are sought out by any of the seed-gathering birds or mammals as winter food, but I’d guess not because they’re dry and chaffy, rather than plump and nutritious.

What I do know is that knapweed lacks the rich web of relationships with other plants and other species that sustain a healthy landscape. And by replacing the native plants, knapweed disrupts those relationships–between pollinator and flower, between bird and the insects they feed their young, between mammal and seed, between those that shelter and those sheltered.

Worse yet, if unchecked, spotted knapweed can kill off the shrubby overstory of basin big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata var. tridentata) that Mark Twain recognized as the “forest canopy in miniature.” These century-old plants, growing as tall as ten feet with twisting stems as big as the bicep of a muscly man, shade the soil, collect rain and snow for moisture, drop a fertilizing layer of leaves, and provide food and homes for hundreds of species of wildlife, from flashy black-and-white buckmoths to speedster pronghorn antelope.

Grandmother big sagebrush in the area I’ve been digging knapweed; the tallest plant is about ten feet.

Without big sagebrush as the sheltering canopy, these drought-challenged grasslands will turn inhospitable indeed, losing species diversity, richness, and their rugged beauty. I remove knapweed as a way to honor the diversity of lives they support, and to restore their wild community to health.

Digging my plant knife into the soil to pry out the spreading roots of a spotted knapweed plant is my personal resistance to climate change, my way to give resilience to the landscapes I love.

My plant knife next to a knapweed I have freshly pried out of the clayey soil, being careful to not disturb the sagebrush roots.

And dig I do, kneeling on the soil, carefully inserting the seven-inch blade of my tool into the soil, and applying enough leverage that the roots come free. Then sitting back, taking a deep breath, stretching my back and my arms, before thrusting the blade into the soil to pry up another knapweed. And another, and another. In some places they are so dense that it takes me an hour or more to clear a meter-square area (that’s a bit bigger than a square yard).

By the end of three or four hours, when I am worn out for the day, I usually have two or three 30-gallon bags filled with knapweed. (I bag up the plants to be taken to the dump so that no seeds are dispersed, and so the decomposing plants don’t continue to emit their mite of poison to the soil.)

Weed bags stuffed into the micro-camper where I sleep in the back of Noche, my Toyota Highlander Hybrid.

While I’m digging weeds, I keep my ears and eyes alert for wildlife. Sometimes a grizzly bear mom wanders by with her almost-grown cubs (yes, I carry bear spray). Or the resident bull elk herds his harem of two dozen or so cows and calves right through the area where I’m working (I move safely out of the way until they leave!).

Romeo in elk form, serenading his Juliets (that’s “Juliets” plural, because of how many females he was wooing).

Or, like the afternoon I was working with filmmaker Beth Davidow, I stop in awe to watch a nearly six-foot-long bullsnake glide past, hunting silently just a few feet from where we stood. (I’m sure Beth, a talented photographer, got a much better shot!)

The hunting bullsnake–her body was as large around as my upper arm.

In my time in Yellowstone, I worked hard, rested well, and found, as a friend put it, “balm for my soul.” It does my spirit good to contribute positively to this Earth, especially in a time of crisis.

Now I’m home, working on restoring wildness and resilience to nature right around the condo complex where I live, including the strip of pollinator habitat with the gold flare of flowering rubber rabbitbrush (Ericamera nauseosa) and rubberweed (Hymenoxys richardsonii), and purple fall asters (which I haven’t yet identified) in the photo below. Not only are these native flowers beautiful and drought-tolerant, they provide fall’s final banquet for pollinators of all sorts, including bees, beetles, and butterflies. And come the hungry months of winter, their seeds will feed bushtits, juncos, and other small songbirds.

Pollinator habitat provides a bit of high-desert wildness right in the city.

You don’t have to journey to Yellowstone and dig knapweed to make a difference.

We can all restore the health of nature around us, by removing invasive weeds and planting native species in yards, parks, and nearby landscapes. In a time full of bad news, returning health, resilience, and beauty to nature nearby is good news for us all. Join me in giving back to the Earth that gives us so much!

Where’s Susan?

Posted on September 7, 2019 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

As in, Where’s Waldo? Except that I’m easily spotted in the front row of the photo above, shot at Ring Lake Ranch in the Wind River Range outside Dubois, Wyoming, last night. That group of people includes many of the participants in my week-long seminar, “Cultivating Sacred Stewardship of Nature in a Time of Climate Change,” and some of the staff and children of Ring Lake Ranch, a dude ranch with a mission of offering “refreshment and renewal in sacred wilderness.”

(The photo is missing several people, including RLR director Andy Blackmum–he’s behind the camera; and multi-faceted ranch wrangler/horse whisperers Mo Morrow and DeWitt Daggett. DeWitt is presenting a seminar in September of 2020 on a spiritual practice of belonging, using horses as teachers.)

The view of Trail Lake and the high peaks of the Winds from my cabin at Ring Lake Ranch.

I can attest that the ranch fulfills its mission and then some. There’s the setting, which is spectacular and wonderfully “apart” enough from ordinary life to be restful just by itself. And the people, both staff and participants, who are not just warm and welcoming, but capable and playful and interesting, and intellectually and spiritually deep. And then there’s the hiking and paddling and riding and food…

I came away feeling quite refreshed and renewed–full of ideas, new connections, and excitement about the work I was teaching and the people I met. (And also a bit saddle-sore from some great trail rides, about which I am not complaining one bit!)

Before going to Ring Lake, I was, frankly, a bit intimidated to be offering a seminar at a place that hosts noted thinkers, writers, and artists in the Christian tradition, especially knowing that among the participants in my group would be faith leaders from various mainstream Christian denominations and other traditions. Honestly, I wondered what I, a scientist and writer who considers herself a Quaker Pagan, would have to offer.

Plenty, as it turned out. The group bubbled over with energy and excitement, ending the week with a new understanding of how restoring healthy nature nearby, including on our church grounds, can also restore us humans, our communities, and the Earth we share. I think I learned as much as the participants did, both from their responses and ideas, and from the work of examining and organizing my thoughts in order to teach.

Sheepeater petroglyph image (circa 800 to 1,200 years ago)

Part of the magic of Ring Lake Ranch is that it has been a sacred site for at least a millennia. The ancestors of today’s Eastern Shoshone people chipped petroglyphs of sacred beings they saw into the sandstone cliffs in and around the ranch. Those rock spirits, some with wings, some masked, some with clawed or curled feet, and many with curving “tails” like smoke leading out of a natural crack in the rock, have the feel of a sacred gallery, an assemblage of wisdom and visions we may never truly understand, but which offer wordless information and inspiration.

I am still processing what was an extraordinary week. I feel as if the time at Ring Lake Ranch was a kind of sacred pilgrimage, one taken without knowing at all what I sought, and despite that, I found just what I needed.

Looking across Yellowstone Lake this afternoon toward the wild Thorofare Valley, where I once walked alone, with only a friend’s dog, on another week-long pilgrimage.

Tonight I am in Gardiner, Montana, writing with the rushing voice of the Yellowstone River coming in my open door, as a quarter moon sails in the still-blue sky after sunset. Tomorrow I will head to Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park and begin a week of digging invasive weeds. Despite a gloomy forecast of rain and cold temperatures, I look forward to the hard physical work. It is good thinking time for me, and I will use it well.

As summer edges toward fall, my wish for all of us is that we find ways to nourish our hearts, minds, and spirits, no matter these difficult times. And that we each cultivate an active relationship with the sacred community of nature around us, and find ways to nourish and restore that community, as part of the work of healing this battered planet–and us, too.

Blessings to you all!

Weeding: Tending My Neighborhood Arroyo

Posted on August 25, 2019 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

Cañada Rincon arroyo with Siberian elms invading.

I’m sitting at the breakfast bar in my condo, my arms scratched, body sweaty, and muscles sore, eating a grilled cheese sandwich with green chile and avocado for late dinner, feeling tired and quite satisfied. I’ve just spent an hour with my well-loved loppers and hand-saw, cutting invasive Siberian elm trees (Ulmus pumila) from the arroyo that runs through my neighborhood.

It’s a classic northern New Mexico waterway, where the water itself is hidden below ground most of the year, except after rains and snow-melt. That sub-surface “stream” helps recharge the groundwater table, and nourishes extra-lush (“lush” for this high desert, that is!) plant growth along it: scattered clusters of cottonwood trees (Populus fremontii) with New Mexico privet (Forestiera pubescens) under them, plus piñon pine (Pinus edulis) and Rocky mountain juniper (Sabina scopulorum) along the edges.

Looking down on the arroyo from the street.

The silvery-green shrubs in the photo above are rubber rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseusa in the language of science, chamisa in Spanish), whose flowers turn whole swaths of the landscape golden in fall, providing what my friend Lauren Springer Ogden calls “the last bar open” for pollinators of all kinds, especially butterflies, beetles, and native bees. Its chaffy seeds are critical food for bushtits and other small songbirds in the hungry months of February and March, when other food is scarce.

Painted lady butterfly nectaring on a rubber rabbitbrush shrub in late September.

Dotted among the rabbitbrush are smooth currant (Ribes cereum) with early flowers that feed hummingbirds and red berries songbirds seek out, Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa) with its bee-friendly flowers and feathery and edible seeds, and narrowleaf yucca (Yucca baileyi) with the tall, candle-like flower stalks that nourish yucca moths and aphid-slurping orioles; plus dozens of kinds of wildflowers, including my favorite, long-flowered gilia (Ipomopsis longiflora), beloved of evening-flying sphinx moths for the nectaries at the base of those long floral tubes.

Long-flowered gilia opening in the evening, ready for white-lined sphinx moths

This bounty of native plants that provides homes and food for wildlife large and small lines the arroyo–unless Siberian elms move in and take over, growing thickets of deep-rooted trees that suck up the underground water, shade out the sun-loving native flora, and drop a thick layer of leaves and small branches that smothers the soil and is as flammable as dry kindling.

And take over they do: Siberian elms are ubiquitous throughout the arid West, imported here from Asia as a hardy, fast-growing, drought- and cold-tolerant tree that would form windbreaks and provide shade in places where shade was scarce. All of that proved true, only the trees took far too readily to their new environment, growing rapidly, and producing thousands of seeds that skittered before the wind, piling up in drifts in every nook and cranny, and sprouting much too readily.

Which wouldn’t be bad if they provided anything close to the rich habitat of the native arroyo flora. One Siberian elm may make a great shade tree for a yard; a whole thicket of them is silent, home to few insect species and fewer birds, in contrast to the lively arroyo habitat outside the thickets. Siberian elms are the definition of an invasive species: one that comes from another place, has few if any relationships with the existing natural community, and proceeds to multiply and ruin the habitat, a playground bully run amok in the landscape.

I’m determined to not let Siberian elms take over Cañada Rincon arroyo and its joyous chorus of birdsong and wildflower blooms. I’m also determined to do what I can to give the native community resilience in the face of catastrophic climate change. So in my spare moments, I get out my tools, pull on my gloves, and walk over to the arroyo to remove another few elm trees.

That hand-saw is as long as my forearm and my hand with fingers extended–it’s a formidable tool!

I’m a steward for this section of the arroyo, which means I pick up trash (there’s not much), and pull and cut invasive weeds. I’m only allowed to use hand tools, and I’m not allowed to cut down trees larger in diameter than a wrist, which I interpret quite liberally. Today I sawed down two ten- or twelve-foot tall elms (that’s one of them in the middle of the photo at the top of the post), plus removed a few that were only a few feet high, the size of fat fingers at the base (for those I use the loppers).

I employ the trees whole for erosion control, dragging them over to the arroyo banks and placing them in eroded rills, trunk upstream, branches downstream. There they act as water retarders, slowing the flow and letting sediments accumulate to stem bank erosion. As long as these teenage elms don’t have any seeds, I like to put them to use, rather then just consign them to the dump.

A freshly-cut elm dragged into a side channel for erosion control.

When I’ve spent my available time and energy, I dust myself off, clean my tools, and take a moment to look down “my” stretch of arroyo, noting the absence of a few more more Siberian elms. There are many more to remove, but I’m not daunted. I’ve reclaimed urban waterways before, and I know the power of even one passionate person (even if that one is small and getting old!) to make significant change.

The truth is, the work is good for me: Using hand tools to remove small trees is very good exercise. And by helping this stretch of arroyo become more resilient in the face of climate change, I’m boosting my resilience, and my store of hope, too.

Looking downstream, with fewer Siberian elms in view…

Living In a Time of Bruised Hearts

Posted on August 11, 2019 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

Santa Fe sunset with bruised purple clouds.

post-sunset
clouds flame out, fade to purple
bruised like our hearts

I posted that haiku on social media on Monday, August 5th, after the mass shootings in Gilroy, California; El Paso, Texas; and Dayton, Ohio.

It’s a bruising time personally, politically, nationally, and globally. Hate and divisiveness are flourishing like no time in my memory since the Viet Nam War era, climate change is accelerating, the astonishing diversity of life that makes this planet home for us all is suffering, war and political upheaval are displacing millions of humans, from Syria to Venezuela and Guatemala, from China’s Uighar people to Yemenis starving in their home villages…

On a personal level, I am reeling from the sudden loss of my sister-in-law, Bonnie Cabe.

Ron and Bonnie Cabe at Richard’s memorial service, December 2011

How do we live with hearts heavy and bruised? How do we get up and face each day, go to work, tend our kids and parents, our communities and our planet; how do we laugh and love when there is so much to grieve and fear and rage against? How do we cultivate resilience in a time that seems to defeat every effort?

There is no one answer, because we are all different. (And bless that diversity, because we need the creative energy of differing voices and viewpoints and talents and energy!).

One thing we can all do is listen within for the goodness that lives inside us all, the “small, still voice” of love and kindness, justice and compassion. Whether you call that voice God or Allah or Pachmama or Universal Consciousness or simply lovingkindness, we can honor and do our best to live by its call to be our best selves, to, as Quakers say, add to the “Ocean of Light and Love” that pours over the “Ocean of Darkness and Fear.”

It seems to me that if we live each day according to what we know is right, treating others with kindness and compassion, if we stand up with grace and courage for what we believe in, we can indeed turn this bruising time toward the best humanity is capable of, and away from the worst.

How do we find the energy and resilience to act in even small kindly ways in a time that is so bruising? Again, I think there is no one answer, but I also know the benefits of time outside in nature, or “Vitamin N” as some researchers call it. Studies show that time in nature calms us physically, lowering our heart rates and blood pressure, and slowing our production of cortisol, the fight-or-flight hormone. Vitamin N also helps us think more clearly, focus better, and learn more easily; it reduces aggression and increases our empathy (including empathy to our own selves), all of which are critical to living in these frightening and painful times.

The arroyo that runs through my neighborhood, a natural walking path for everyone from humans to coyotes, roadrunners, and horned toads.

“Nature” doesn’t have to be a wilderness; it can be the wildness that flourishes everywhere around us, whether the arroyo running through my neighborhood or the less-manicured corners of a city park.

For me, as I wrote in a proposal for the new book I’m working on, solace and resilience and the other benefits of Vitamin N come from hanging out with native plants:

Plants have been my solace and my inspiration for as long as I can remember: As I child, I cycled with my mom to vacant lots scheduled for bulldozing, and carefully rescued native wildflowers, carrying the plants home in my bike basket to relocate to her woodland garden. As a young scientist, I studied ecosystems from the plants’ point of view. I’ve grown gardens of native and edible plants, designed landscapes and given talks on gardening for habitat and humans, and worked at ecological restoration involving plants.

I never reflected on why plants wove themselves through my days. Until my husband was diagnosed with brain cancer. Over the two and a quarter years that we walked with his brain tumors, I went from being Richard’s lover, creative collaborator, best friend, and co-parent, to being his caregiver, driver and chef, medicine administrator, butt-wiper, diaper wrangler, and eventually, the midwife of his death.

Escaping outside to the company of the restored mountain prairie of our front yard, our patio pollinator garden, or my organic kitchen garden was all that kept me even partly sane. After Richard died, I recognized that working with native plants to restore Earth is my calling, an expression of my Terraphilia. In this time of climate crisis, gun violence, racism, and sickening divisiveness, we need urgently need what plants can teach us about reweaving healthy community, about restoration and the power of simply working together.

A sacred datura flower (Datura wrightii), opening in my patio garden tonight, rain-washed by a grumbling thunderstorm.

In short, we need nature, and we need each other. So get outside, hug your family and friends, live with kindness, speak up and act out with courage, and love long and well. We can live with bruised hearts, and we can help each other heal and bring positive changes to this battered world.

I’m not saying it will be easy, but we have to keep working at it. Together. With love and laughter, with outrage and steadfastness, with compassion and kindness and creativity.