Buffalo gourds

 

 

Buffalo Gourds; A Fresh Look at an Ancient Plant

 

If one sees a metate and the mono that goes with it, it is possibly 12,000 years old (plus the millions of years of age of the stone itself), give or take a few millennia.  If it was carried from Beringia (the strip of land that once connected Asia and what’s now Alaska), which is a colorfully absurd thought then it might be 25,000 years old because the Beringians lived there, possibly, for 10,000 years; waiting for the ice to melt and forcing them to mosey down to The Land of Enchantment, perhaps looking for and finding ‘greener pastures’.  As they did not yet invent fry bread or even have white or whole wheat flour (as the major grains were brought over by the Europeans by way of the Steppes) and corn was still in South America, then the question becomes: what did they eat?  And, especially, as the centuries wore on and droughts came and went, leaving ancient tree rings proving drought; what did they rely on during those times?  The piñon bumper harvest happens every now and then, so one can’t wait for that, really.  Amaranth wasn’t even around.  There were lots of grasses and because of that there were lots of ‘bison’, or what I think of as ‘buffalo”.  So there was meat.  What about tubers and seeds?  They had a metate and needed something to grind up with it.  I honestly (this time) think it was what scientists call Cucurbita foetidissima or Buffalo Gourd, the common name that mysteriously first appeared in print in 1948 and took.

  I have seen my donkeys occasionally eat the ‘disgusting smelling’ leaves (and then walk up to me and exhale on me, almost rendering me unconscious), so they and just a handful of people sort of like the smell; nonetheless it is called, roughly translated from the Latin, ‘stinking squash’.   Well, lots of plants are named ‘stinking’ this and ‘stinking ‘ that  but some observant person(s) decided on ‘Buffalo Gourds’;  a very powerful thing like a buffalo (…… I am not sure but curious about what a buffalo smells like….aren’t you?) and as the bison tended to roll around on the ground and on their backs and make huge semi-permanent ‘wallows’ of bare ground that, fascinatingly, almost nothing grows on after they are done….except, let’s say, the buffalo gourd which has a huge tuber for a root; sometimes the size and shape! of a human being and  is very capable of surviving almost anything, and I am wondering if, by chance, buffalos liked to roll in the stinking leaves for the special insect and fly repelling properties (one of the uses people are looking into as I write) and maybe the side benefit of it being a cow aphrodisiac or medication (think ‘zoopharmacology’; not my term but perhaps coined by my brother!);  they grew on afterwards, and as the gourds have a distinct resemblance to a bull buffalo piece of anatomy anyway  and so some observant person(s) back in the day decided to call this amazing plant “buffalo gourd”!

 I recently encountered a petroglyph that puzzled me until I ‘realized’ that I probably knew what it was:

 

 

   

The triangle shapes on the left side of the ‘gourd’ circles are the basic shape of the leaves; in fact the rock art clearly, in my mind, celebrates buffalo gourds….and why shouldn’t it because it was a main staple of the native diet; the seeds and hull ground up by the metate into a fine flour to make a tasty sun-baked-on-the back-of-a-rock (or metate) flat bread!

The point is that the buffalo gourd plant, what with its high protein/oil seeds, huge tuber, extreme drought tolerance, insect repellent and medicinal properties and its myriad other colorful aspects ( and great for batting practice!);  I bet a nickel it’ll save the world!

 

 

 

 

 

Controlled Burn Dude

Imagine a person who got up out of his bed that morning

With a slight hangover and late for work again

And he drives his wife’s car to the office, cause his broke down last week

He likes his job but hates his bosses and he is glad to get out in the fresh air

Today and loves the breeze that appears to be whipping up, cause it makes

Him feel alive and alert, like a horse in that cool spring air;

Ready for the world and to dance across the field

Today is a big day, cause it’s time for the controlled burn

And he gets to be the big star as he was chosen by the office

To be the one to light the match; well, lighter, then weed burning torch

He fumbles with the tank, forgetting that to attach the torch you have to turn it “leftie tightie”

And he looks around once through his sunglasses and hesitates

Feeling like something is wrong, but not sure, too vague a feeling

Oh well, what the hell; everything will be just fine and that coffee has got me crankin.

…in the old days, in the dream days, when the summer heat and the cottonwoods along the creek have dropped their leaves and the deer rustle the dry leaves and begin to browse on them, making little crunching sounds after having waited these months to feel that taste again that they love so much and there was no breeze at all today as if the great spirit were holding its breath and the insects had hidden some as the frosts had come and, today, there coating from past day’s snow gift was still on the moss side of the trees and under the leaves and the sky was rich with more snow….coming.  The sacred day had arrived at last when the elders had gathered and prayed and talked and chose him, a great honor, to strike the flint on the milkweek pod unravelings and the time is just right, we are sure, to light the fire that will bring health again to our beloved forest…….

It does matter whether we are in tune with the forest or not, as the art of tending the forest is just that; an art, pure and simple and no one who is not attuned to nature can do any good at all, ever.

lovetangles

 

SUSURRUS

 Susurrus soothing solidified solace 

Observing sound's romance with

Turgid agua creek banks and tall tremulous leaves, trees stretching yoga postures

Blue blue sky suggesting eternal value

To have and share vibrance ripples

Eddies upon Eddies upon Eddy's

Dancing rivulets of water/flow/times

Vortexian self-similarity like fractals

Doing the Schottisch one two three hop,one two three hop, hop,  hop,  hop,  hop…

Affectionate mental love making because

There is no comparison to being with this Mistress, except true love and one- ness;

Is no substitute but a great gratitudinous 

Ecstacy, kisses upon kisses

Deep intensity of sensitive chaos amidst

Forest glade and grass blade

The screenplay priceless photos

No fire other than the fire rushing pell mell

Along with multitudes of skirts up and no shame Anywhere.

Children running in almost mindless play

Glad tidings to all; happy to be right here

With a heart to feel the timeless joy and dances

Glance at the hand that so sublimely echos and mirrors the working man's hands and, oddly, the stones that speak of eons of effort

Don't really need a girlfriend cause this is Unconditional Love 

such lover we come back to over and over

Honey dripping from her mouth

Water pouring out of her and nothing else to  do but be naturally gorgeous and mysterious;

Susurrus is her name and flowing over rocks is her game;Nurturing the grassy banks and knolls

Frolic in the Forest Arroyo.

Volver Volver Volver , a tus Brazos otra  vez

Pebbles and  stones and boulders all cohabiting and each silently screaming,

Look at me on my billionth birthday today,

More or less.  Yes I've been around these parts. 

Volver a mis Brazos otra vez.

BARKITECTURE by Thor.

 

TO BE OR NOT TO BE; THAT IS THE QUESTION.

 When a woman loses a pregnancy there can be great grief and little support out there.

What do I mean?

A profound thing happens but often there are not clear reasons; mostly statistics for how often this happens; 25 per cent of the time, they say.  It is not considered all that important in some ways.

The body or some circumstance has somehow made a decision to abort.

The mother can grieve but there is not a body of deep understanding; like a strange little secret about the mystery being cast out somehow.

No religious ceremony.

No burial

No Grave

No poetry to read 

Few people to talk to…

No time off work

No money

No presents

Just no hopes anymore.

When a woman makes that decision,

In the situation of needing to do what

Nature does 25 per cent of the time;

Make a decision maybe once or twice in a lifetime 

Then still there is no poetry to read

No service

No support

No clean path.

So these women have a lot in common in one way and so does the slave woman who is impregnated or the girl on her first date or a women in a myriad of situations like this who might still wonder what the child might have looked like or acted like.

Natural curiosity.

Natural thoughts.

Like the pain of lost love

Or the pain of losing anything

Or the relief.

We need to control our bodies

Like how our hands make something.

How we decide to be ourselves.

Or see our lives like falling leafs 

And we learn to let other people just be themselves and not try to change them;

Turns out we pretty much can't anyway.

No matter how hard we try

Just almost impossible. 

So it appears that life is about

Choices; for all of us, even,

Sometimes really really impossibly 

Tough ones.

Still about probabilities and compromises,

Still about survival, just as our natural bodies seem to make tough decisions based on complicated calculus, so we, the owners of our bodies do the same and we attempt to Manage.

The unspeakable cruelty of a misogynist's 

Prying into their bodies and lives to ascertain that perhaps the woman ingested a pill is beyond reproach and yet, this is the world we find ourselves in;

Where a woman cowers while a man who needs a free vasectomy gloats about his concern for life.

Shame on them; those men and their patriarchal religions.

A woman should never ever ever be under the thumb of a man or have a man pry into their lives and bodies.

Period.

This must stop and most of the world knows it, except for the uneducated, fanatics.

Shame on them; hypocrites as they send their tender children off to war to die in their places.

They open up the grief and pain and stomp around by suggesting they will codify their dominance and intrusion.

 The pain 

Cowards and true murderers in fact!

Dogs in mangers.

You who have no tools to be a mother;

Back off!