Animals

Squid Kiss

I love cephalopods. One million years ago, Octopi and Homo sapiens shared an ancestor which bequeathed both species with similar eyes. The cephalopods are the most intelligent of the invertebrates. The largest eyeball on Earth, one very much like ours with a round pupil, belongs to the Giant Squid. When I gaze at a cephalopod, […]

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Butterfly Arising

With this ink drawing, I celebrate our precious pollinating insect world. In the middle of the composition, the butterfly drifts aloft amidst an energetic environment created by hundreds of small ink lines.  As it flutters, I imagine the insect senses smells, temperature changes, airborne particles, visual indicators, sound vibrations, tastes, wind sensations, magnetic field resonances,

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Beetle Condos

My friend, Maile, asked me to help her hunt for a new condo. Although I currently lived in a house, I had lived in apartments for over twenty years and maintained an interest in Maile’s quest. I was amazed at the wide variety of grids people scurry in and out of each day. The art

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Eagle Slayer

My sister, Nan, killed an eagle in Canada. Distraught, she choked out the words, describing her crime to me. Having worked for the Department of Ecology in Washington State, she assumed she’d go to jail. Although her close encounter with the eagle had been an accident, she knew these giant birds were sacred to the

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Birds of a Feather

Browsing in Native Alaskan trading posts and chatting with folks, I was surprised to learn that eagles and ravens were called “lovebirds” by the Tlingit Native Americans. Many carvings and paintings depicted them together, as in this photo of a moose antler totem pole: the eagle above with spread wings perched on top of the

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My Stag

The stag and I communed for what seemed like an endless time. I thanked him for sharing his trail with me and praised his beauty again and again. I told him I would leave him gifts of salt, which I knew deer needed. But far more than mental words, our communication consisted of a surge

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Meditating with Manta Rays

When my meditation group decided to meditate and swim with dolphins off the coast of the Big Island, Hawaii, I immediately signed up. What could be more exhilarating and divine? On a warm spring day, amid sparkling blue and turquoise waters, we putted away on a small boat and, within several miles, located an amenable

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Calling Cory

A Treasured Spiritual Bond When I lived in the desert outside Las Vegas, my beloved dog, Cory, an Akita/Collie mix (with a curly tail and long nose), loved to wander through the sandy scrub-brush for miles, no doubt searching for small critters. He was a large, mellow guy, white, black and orange patches of fur,

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