Field Notes

Date: May 27, 2025

Location: The far side of the canyon, Brunswick, Maine

Time: Morning to early afternoon

Weather: Clear skies, sun-warmed woods, strong light, and a moving river

Moon Phase: New Moon

Astrology: Sagittarius entered Aries for the first time since 1999

Intentions:
To see what changes have come to the quiet side of the canyon

To track signs of the bear

To commune with the energy of Rachel Carson

To gain clarity about returning to Ohio — where to stay, how to protect energy

To feel into what it means to carry a different story

Encounter Tags: chipmunk messenger · fern spiral · reishi mushroom · slug on hemlock · blue jay cry · eagle overhead · woodpecker nest · turkey feather · red velvet mite · crow feather scattering · river’s voice · Carson’s spirit

I walked in with a question I’d been carrying for weeks: how do I go back to a place that has drained me, and not lose myself in the returning? Ohio waits, and with it, the tangle of family, old memory, the pull of stories I’ve been trying to set down.

I pressed Silent Spring against my ribs and asked the land to help me listen. Rachel Carson walked with me — a guide, a ghost, a witness to what gets noticed when you finally slow down enough to look.

The land answered. It always does.

The Discovery of Magic

The first messenger was a chipmunk. Eyes bright, tail twitching, utterly still for a moment before darting off. The gatherer. The one who collects what’s scattered, what’s small, what others overlook.

“What detail might shift the whole story?”

Further down, a fern spiral stopped me. It had formed a bowl: open, coiled, waiting. And beside it, a reishi mushroom — ancient and medicinal, standing like something set there on purpose. Then the slug arrived, gliding over the mushroom’s rim. No shell. No armor. Only softness and knowing.

The land whispered:

“Slow down. Let what is sacred come forward on its own time.”

At my standard hemlock, another reishi. And keeping watch: a red slug, luminous, present.

Hemlock. Reishi. Slug. The triad of strength, spirit, and softness. Two slugs within 20 minutes, noted.

Above me, two blue jays screamed, circling and scolding. Warning or blessing, I couldn’t say. But just then I found a dark wound in the hemlock — oozing sap, open and alive. The tree wasn’t hiding the injury. Just living it.

The jays, the resin, the gash in the bark. They all said the same thing:

“You are allowed to guard your softness. You can speak what needs to be said.”

The walk slowed. Every time I stopped, a bird answered.

A Hairy Woodpecker kept close the whole time. I thought it was coincidence until I found the nest — a small round opening in the tree, and coming from deep inside it, what I’d been mistaking for frogs. It was baby woodpeckers. Urgent, alive, invisible until I actually listened.

The protector had been watching me the whole time.

“What else have I misheard — because I didn’t slow down enough to really listen?”

Then I lifted my eyes and there was the eagle, soaring directly overhead, on this side of the river for the first time. A sky-sign. A great yes. Something opened in my chest like the air itself was giving permission.

“You’re not just asking for clarity. You’re ready to carry it.”

Later, a turkey feather, broad and banded, beside my boot. Not hawk, but turkey: earth wisdom, gratitude, lineage. A reminder that the sacred lives not only in the sky but right here, where the feet touch moss.

And then, dazzling across my bag like a ruby: a red velvet mite. Tiny, essential. Not fierce like a bear, not noble like a stag. A cleaner of soil. A bearer of quiet power.

“I am both the bear and the mite. I carry both stories now.”

I sat by the river where the night before I’d offered prayers to the beaver. No sign of her today. But the veery sang, the sun warmed my back, and the ants ran their orchestration at my feet.

I didn’t need to see the beaver. The prayer had already been received.

Near the end of the path, under tangled brush by the river, I came upon a scatter of crow feathers. Not just one. Many. Laid like the aftermath of something — a struggle or a ritual, I couldn’t tell which.

It felt like a veil being lifted. The crow, keeper of story and shadow, left this:

“You are ready to walk back — not as the same version of yourself, but as a weaver of the new story.”

Reflections to Walk With

• What treasure are you still unfurling within yourself?
• What part of you is ready to be held, not solved?
• Can you trust the trail you’re leaving behind, even if no one else sees it yet?
• What if the clarity you seek doesn’t come as a grand sign, but as a flicker, a whisper, a flash?
• If Rachel Carson walked beside you, what would she stop to kneel beside?
• What story are you carrying into the hard places, and are you ready to change it?