The Spring Ephemerals of your Inner Wilds
The impractical, cast aside parts may hold the key to understanding your true nature
Last night, my daughter woke us because she was scared. This is a fairly frequent occurrence. She wakes up in the night to go to the bathroom, then finds herself frightened by the dark and by being alone. It doesn’t seem to be decreasing in frequency over time. I am not always as tender as I should be.
She came to our room. I got up, ready to be calm and compassionate until she started screaming and sobbing because I was not her father. My not being “daddy” is a recurring night time problem in our household, one that I handle with widely varying levels of grace. Unfortunately, her upset often triggers a self-fulfilling prophecy. Her rage pushes some powerful emotional button in me that instantly turns me into the reason she would prefer her father. I go from calm and compassionate to resentful, frustrated and impatient in no time flat. My husband generally has a much wider bandwidth of scenarios in which he can maintain tenderness and patience.
It’s wonderful to know that our strongest attachments are not those that have never ruptured, but rather with those who know how to rupture and repair. In other words, it is far better to be imperfect and admit it (or even better to be able to listen to others tell you how you were imperfect and truly hear and receive it) than to be perfect. Which, particularly as a parent, is kind of awesome, right? We screw up all the time. On the other hand, opening ourselves to honest self-reflection and honest feedback from others is really hard, hurts quite a lot, and requires no small amount of bravery. It’s probably harder than striving for perfection except that this is actually achievable and perfection is not.
I have also come to wonder if these sensitive buttons might actually be trail markers pointing the way to our beautiful wilds. In my husband’s family lore, it is said that his grandfather was traveling in Colorado, looked over a beautiful mountain vista, and Iowa farmer through and through said, “What a shame! All this land and you can’t grow a thing on it!” Don’t get me wrong, there is a great deal of beauty in Iowa, but dramatic vistas aren’t often our thing.
Last week, we visited Wildcat Den State Park in Iowa. It’s a lovely park with large sandstone structures. One of those dramatic places that does not serve well for growing things (at least from a modern agricultural sense).
However, while we were there, for the first time ever, I saw hepatica, spring beauty, bloodroot, and Dutchman’s breeches growing in Iowa. We saw woodchuck and mink (I think, it may have been a fisher). I see these plants fairly often in my travels in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin (the animals less so). However, with the best soil in the world, nearly every plowable inch of land in Iowa is a corn or soybean field. The land that couldn’t be plowed was grazed, so only special rocky places that were fairly useless from an agricultural perspective still have these special wild plants and creatures. Hepatica, spring beauty, bloodroot, and Dutchman’s breeches are part of a special class of wildflowers called spring ephemerals. Their niche is to sprout and bloom in the forest before the trees leaf out. At least here, in the upper midwest, they are often the oldest thing in the forest. Samuel Thayer, foraging and all-around plant expert, once told me that it is not unusual for a Trillium to be 700 years old.
This is the tragedy of seeing these forests only from the perspective of their economic and agricultural value. We have/are destroying communities that will take hundreds or thousands of years to regenerate. We often neglect to notice these ancient communities exist. It is similar within our internal landscapes. The spots within us that are useful, practical, rational, comfortable, or easy to get to for others have been thoroughly plowed, grazed, and tamed. They now need fertilizers for anything to grow and have been left to erode into your inner streams. The repair processes often take a long time, sometimes generations. On the other hand, the craggy, boggy, inaccessible places have been left alone. They’re totally beautiful, but not always useful, and they’re a hell of a lot of work to get to. Sometimes, they are unspoiled because they were seen as good for nothing. However, if you’re trying to bring the wild back to those tilled and grazed parts, they’re good for everything. Transplant a scoop of dirt from your wild hinterlands into the overgrazed forest or scatter seeds in a barren field and see what pops up.
The neighborhood I grew up in was a farm field before it was a neighborhood. About 35 years ago, they skimmed off that rich, black topsoil and left thick clay. It was not an especially hospitable place for wild things to grow, but over time, the trees have matured, the birds have returned. Recently, my parents saw a red-tailed hawk perched on their fire pit. When we visited, we spotted several foxes running through the neighborhood for the first time ever. That plowed, barren, skimmed field has become capable of hosting again. Perhaps you don’t even need to transplant and scatter seeds to find the truth of our inner nature, you just need time and your gaze directed elsewhere.
As I have written about here, here, and here previously, the place I feel the most domestication of my soul is within my working life. John O’Donohue writes beautifully about this in Anam Cara. The whole book is lovely, but the section about work is highlight every word writing for me in this moment. He says, “Work can be an attractive way of sinning deeply against the wildness and creativity of the soul.” However, he also writes, “The person who can approach the workplace not with linear analysis, which is so predictable and repetitive, but with imaginative possibility can re-imagine the workplace for its participants and open it up in an engaging and inspiring way.” I am coming perilously close to my sabbatical from work, and I find myself wrestling with these questions. Am I sinning against the wildness and creativity of my soul in my current work? Or is there room for imagination in the ER? Imaginative possibility is certainly needed within the healthcare system, but can the healthcare system receive it and work with it? For example, I had a lovely discussion with
’s Substack subscribers that called my attention to the necessity of ritual for those of us who work in healthcare, particularly in high acuity, high intensity, high volume areas. I think I could work within the existing system if I were allowed to use my imagination and soul in this way. I would be shocked if the powers that be find value in this.Today, I am even more inspired by my upcoming sabbatical than usual, because
called my attention to how it has the potential to be a powerful prayer. I am entering it with the intention of healing and listening. I want to leave you with two more quotes from John O’Donohue, which bring us back to what work looks like when we work from those boggy, craggy places with the spring ephemerals popping up. “Work should be the place where the soul can enjoy becoming visible and present. The rich unknown, reserved and precious within us can emerge, into visible form.” Regarding the Celtic view of time at this St. Patrick’s Day, Ostara time, which I am taking with me into my sabbatical, “The recognition of presence and the celebration of nature were only possible because time was a window on the eternal. Time was never reduced to achievement. Time was for wonder.”
I'm behind on some of my substack posts that I like to read, but maybe it's fitting that I'm only getting to yours today, as my 7 year old had me up for the same reasons at 3am today, so I can relate! 🥱 It is such a gift that we can always repair. And that the repair is often stronger then the rupture!