(warning: post contains more profanity than usual)

I am not sure which planets were aligning this week, but the celestial happenings caused me to lose my rational stuffing.

That deadly fucker of a viral interloper really got under my skin, this week in particular. I felt demoralized and helpless, which manifested in often wailing: “Why does the bloody finish line keep moving further away in this marathon?!”, especially after digesting newsfeeds. I suspect I do not have a monopoly on these feelings.

After opening this week’s post in such a lovely and bleak manner, I imagine a conversation happening out there somewhere:

“Marv! The karma cabin lady is losing her shit!”

“Who?!“

“The karma cabin lady! You know, the one with mind monkeys, who almost maimed her husband with an axe, who named her outhouse and woodstove and writes poetry from the throne…that one!”

(pause)

“Mighta been a foregone conclusion, Flo.”

So what is to be done about the karma cabin lady losin’ it? Stay calm and engage these easily-implemented coping strategies:

Coping Strategy #1 HUMOR

Humor has served humanity since the dawn of time to cope with some serious human-experience happenings. Early cave dwellers would cheer each other up, before the advent of fire and storytelling, by bonking each other over the head with sticks. I am sure it’s historically accurate. And hilarious. Especially if you caught the other guy by surprise squatting behind a thorn bush.

Here’s a little skit to take you back in time:

Dude rubbing his head and pulling thorns out of his arse: “Bro! NOT funny!”

Bro rolling around on ground, breathlessly clutching his mid-section above loin cloth: “Totally funny, dude! I feel much better about my existence as a Neanderthal and all the turmoil experienced from earth-dragging knuckles!”

Our humor has grown more complex, but Dave sure laughed when I read this aloud to him.

Laughter makes everyday life more tolerable; woes become a shared experience from which we find comfort…this beats feeling like the sole survivor on a lonely island-of-doom.

Coping Strategy #2 COOKIES

Eat oatmeal raisin cookies. They raise your dopamine levels (briefly) and fiber intake. Win-win.

Coping Strategy #3 GOOD BOOKS

Read good books. I am reading Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s To Speak for the Trees. She is a medical biochemist/botanist rockstar. If I ever meet her, the stars in my eyes will cause me to speak jibberish and run around in tiny circles.

Humor and cookies have been helping me this week, but it was the following passage that awoke something buried beneath the cookie crumbs in me.

She writes, in reference to addressing climate change:

If every person on Earth planted one tree per year for the next six years, we would stop climate change in its tracks. The addition of those wonderful molecular machines, which pull carbon from our atmosphere/and bubble out oxygen in return, would halt the rise in global temperature and return it to a manageable level. Three hundred million years ago, trees took an environment with a toxic load of carbon and turned it into something that could sustain human life. They can do it again.

This simple call to plant a tree a year, coupled with her recount of the day in Ireland when she (as a young girl) and her uncle cut and stook a five-acre barley field, by hand, re-ignited my resilience; I will not allow this to be doused by viral variants any longer.

Diana says, of the barley field experience:

Inside your head and heart, when a problem seems beyond your ability…take the first step anyway. It taught me that our limits, alone and together, lie much further out than we imagine. It taught me there is no such thing as a hopeless situation.

Just the words needed to awaken me from my wallow. I imagine Diana saying something like:

“Snap out of it girl! If I can cut and stook an entire barley field as a gearrchaile, then you can certainly get your head back in the game.” or “Snap to it and go plant a bloody tree!” – depending on her mood.

I wonder if I can someday entice Diana B-K to visit the karma cabin and offer her wisdom on how to best care for the forest. Yes, I know she is a world-renown expert and superstar but hey, a girl can dream.

Back at the Cabin, I Regain my Sanity

We have been clearing a small area to add a bunkie this spring. As the cabin will be uninhabitable for some time, we need a place to sleep in order to complete the renos. The bunkie will also become a forest reprieve to welcome future guests.

I lie down on the warm forest floor and look above:

Learning a while ago about the “wood wide web” and how trees communicate and sustain each other underneath the forest floor, it is no wonder I sensed the elders’ reproach as we removed some young trees to accommodate the future bunkie.

Requesting forgiveness, I rest under their bronchi branches and await their verdict. I hope they sense we are trying to work with the land and join this symbiotic relationship. These are ventilators we will not survive without.

As I think about this synergy, my best bud of 40 years comes to mind. She and her partner recently decided to sell their sexy, waterfront condo downtown, and buy a little home on 6+ acres in the country. My friend, who doesn’t mince words and to whom decisive action comes naturally, most likely said something like:

“Bri – we are getting the hell out of dodge. Start packing.”

In all the photos she has shared, only one has been of the house. Every other photo highlights the beauty of the land. The land and its inhabitants are the important things to her now, not the abode.

HGTV may lose viewers if this becomes a trend; no more sexy, glossy shots of interior renovations, just those of tantalizing trees, inviting mosses, and delectable mushrooms.

Feet Planted

Sanity has been regained for now; my feet are once again firmly planted on the earth. I hope yours are as well.

If you falter as I sometimes do, grab a cookie, lie down on the nearest bit of concrete-free land and gaze upwards. Offer up a prayer of thanks for our majestic benefactors and breathe with the rhythm of nature’s ventilators.

Lastly, find comfort in Synergy: our collective, cooperative efforts will give rise to something far greater, and more powerful, than the simple sum of our individual parts.