Wide open, deeply rooted
Horsetails, salmon-trees, and mothers of all kinds
content note: This post talks about (expanded ideas of) mothers and mothering.
Dear Ones,
I’ve seen many times the way the forest can hold people. I’ve felt it myself. For me, it feels like the best of what mothering can be.
I met a young person recently who asked if I always knew I wanted to be a mother. She’s in college, preparing to study abroad next year. She was smart, kind, curious, and she shared that she’s been feeling a pull towards caring for another being - a human child maybe someday; dog or cat, perhaps sooner.
I answered that I always knew, I always wanted to be a mama.
I’ve written a bit about my path to becoming a mother here, and perhaps a few other places. That path twists and turns through the years, and it’s a path I’d never have envisioned back when I was that young person’s age. Back then, I was sure my mothering would mean pregnancy, birth, feeding my little one from my own body, raising them from the very beginning.
Lately the Horsetails are calling me, their bristly bodies growing abundant (and early this year I think, like so many). They’re appearing suddenly near sloughs and streams, rivers and even roads.
It turns out the Horsetails (Equisetum - such a great name) are clever (there’s a reason they’ve been around so long) and don’t confine their reproduction to just one way. First they grow as a fertile brown stem, ready to spread spores. Then soon, the brown body dies back and a green one grows.
This new, green body is infertile, but a lighteater, and weaves the deep chemical magic of sugar from sun. Their photosynthesis feeds the rooting rhizomes that keep Horsetail growing, and almost invincible. Roots are fed, and up from underground, new life is continually created.
So which body is mother, which one creates and tends and nurtures life? Their lineage is a long line of brown becoming green becoming brown becoming green, on and on to the far distant past and unimaginable future.
I think of all the ways we can be in relationship; the ways we care for each other, and the names we give different kinds of care and relationships.
I want mother to be big and expansive. I want to let the word’s roots and rhizomes grow out and into so many possible places.
This way of tending to one another can be bigger and deeper than the confines of gender and biology. Let’s invite mother and mothering to honor and include those who have carried beings inside themselves, all the way to birth, and those of us who haven’t too. How would it be to let these words hold us all, and support us in caring better for each other?
I am so very lucky to be surrounded by families, queer and otherwise, that show me all the ways one can be mama, mommy, nana, mum, baba, papa, and more. Turning to the land, we learn that caring for and nurturing other lives is the truest order of things. Here are the mother trees, sharing nutrients with their forest found families, and bio-kin too. We see these strong mothers mount defenses against invading insects and diseases, sturdy protectors of their land. Close by, grandmother nurse logs, covered in moss, ferns, and fungi, lay lush along the earth. The tree-life of these ones complete, their bodies now hold new generations.
Looking deeply, we find salmon in the trees, their bodies carrying ocean memories right into the heartwood, cells swimming through the whole ecosystem. Saltwater-freshwater changeling now mother tree, now nurse log, now baby sapling. Life and death birthing life, swimming forward and back endlessly.
When we tend to and are tended by others - friends, family, colleagues, teachers, clients, students, plant and animal companions - is something there of mothering? For me, I know that my heart turns to all of them in a way that is not exactly like, but not entirely different from, the care I offer my own child. At the same time, something in me grows and changes from these relationships, even those that cause harm and pain. Being in relation with others creates, in many ways, the ever-evolving me from day to day and year to year. Is this some kind of mothering?
Perhaps this is the kind of mothering we can turn to, notice, and cultivate. For many, mother has not been a word that conjures a sense of care and protection. Our own experiences as mothered or mothering can be fraught and confusing, full of or tinged with grief. Perhaps a shift to this wide open, expansive view of mothering can be a lamppost, lighting our way to one another.
We can, if we choose, see ourselves as the constant recipient of care from loving mothers. The very air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink - they offer us life, every second we’re alive. We can choose to know our water, air, and food as incredibly generous mothers. If we do, what loving responsibility to these mothers will then grow within us?
Sometimes I go to the forest and find a nook on soft ground, sheltered by trees. When I can, I curl up right there, nestled in the roots, and sleep for a little while. I offer them something too: some fresh water, a hair or two from my head, my real presence and attention. In this way, I’m held and protected, and I remember I have so many mothers to turn to for love and care.
Horsetail is an ancient one. They once towered to roughly 100 feet or more, giant Devonian forests of Equisetum covering the land. Today, those giant ones have become much of our world’s coal deposits. I consider this as I sit with Horsetail now, and remember their far distant mothers. Their ancestors became coal that likely kept my ancestors alive with warmth and light. My grandmothers generations back may have cooked food for their families over fires fed with the fossilized remains of Horsetail.
Our human story (the big one, the one that includes us all) is intimately entwined with the more-than-human story. We’re here because of them. Their lives are inseparable from our own. Of course they are here for us, and want us to be here for them. Our small human stories, too, are ultimately never singular. I’m never alone. You’re never alone. Our lives grow from roots miles deep and wide; we are breathing in eons of ancestors.
Mothers of all kinds are right here waiting for us. They’re waiting for us to remember them, and to remember ourselves back into their embrace.
This lovely song from Sinéad O’Connor offers sweetness to my heart. I hope to yours too.
Rose and Cedar offerings
Queer, Trans, NB Forest Bathing at the beautiful Leach Botanical Garden is Sunday May 17th. Come spend some quiet, nourishing time with the trees, exuberant plants, and other Beloved Queers.
Grief Care is a space for you and your grief to be heard and held, by me and by the more-than-human-world.
Antidotes and seeds
Watch these brilliant, beautiful kids and their poetry slam (you can turn on captions by clicking the 3 dots in the right corner).
Here are some Black-owned brands to buy from directly, while you’re boycotting Target.
Demand your members of Congress keep fighting to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home.
If you’re in the Portland area, write a letter to Portland State University demanding they reinstate Dr. Nic as Director of the Women’s Resource Center! This letter also demands that PSU commits to protecting staff who stand in solidarity with Palestine and advocate for justice for all people (as a PSU adjunct, I’m one of them).
with love, heather
It really struck me reading this how simple mothering can be - and how much we've complicated it with capitalism and patriarchy and white supremacy. Thank you for rooting us down so deeply, as always💜