The green frogs are back in the pond. I saw one about a week ago, but yesterday I managed to get a photo. As I got near, another frog dove down to the bottom–so there are two. Once again it is lovely to sit by the pond quietly, watching them sit quietly. And we now have the added pleasure of hundred of little tadpoles. I stopped scooping out algae to avoid scooping out the babies, so the pond isn’t so “pretty” to human view, but the frogs, tadpoles and honey bees seem to really like the algae. The frogs like to hide under it, the bees land on it to drink, and apparently it is good food for the tadpoles.
I was also happy to receive three new plants of sweet flag–or kiwhoswasq, as I learned in Passamaquoddy class. That means “muskrat root”, since apparently muskrats eat it, and it is also a useful medicinal root. It should do well in the pond, and multiply itself there. It doesn’t look like much yet, so I will wait to post photos. Meanwhile the ferns are coming back on their own.
Finally, one more picture of the frog, after it jumped down to the water, sitting on a white rock, surrounded by the tadpoles. They are all over the pond now, especially around the edges.
During the night the two baby robins were back cozy in the nest. This morning, they came back out on the beam, one of them perching boldly on the edge. I was sitting at the kitchen table watching through the window, and then a few minutes passed by and suddenly they were gone! I went outside on the porch, and then saw a small bird fly from the ground in the nearby orchard up to the trees by the fence. I was in a Zoom meeting, so I went back to do that for another 30 minutes, then went outside to look for the babies–I guess I should call them fledglings now. After walking around in the orchard a bit, I saw one of the parent robins in a tree near the fence.
Parent robin near fence.
So I looked all over near the fence, and then stood on a little block of wood to see over the fence. There it was! I saw one of them in our neighbor’s young pear tree. It was being quite still and quiet, hiding among the leaves.
Robin fledgling hidden in the leaves of the pear tree over the fence.
Close up of fledgling robin
I was reassured to see this one on its perch in the tree. I didn’t find the other one, but we have so many trees around our yard that it could be anywhere. When I went back to the fence a couple hours later, this one was gone too. And just like that, no more baby robins on our porch, at least for now. I am assuming they won’t come back to the nest. It has been one month since the first egg was laid. Most of that time they were hidden from sight, but every sighting was a joy. And I am so happy that the robin parents finally fledged their first youngsters!
What could be better than to watch baby robins venturing over the nest? Yesterday we saw their little heads popping up and then hiding back down in the nest. Today, they were out of the nest, onto the beam next to it! It is actually two beams with a lower beam between, so they can hide down and lift up there too. They are beginning to try out their wings, and explore the length of the beam. Still clamoring for food from parent! Their reddish color is starting to show. I wonder how long until they flutter a bit further. Can’t be long now.
Robins peaking over the edge of the beam, out of the nest!
Parent robin on the nest, babies next to it, eager, one has got the worm.
The E-book of Finding Our Way Home is now available! You can get an EPUB version at lulu.com for $9.97. (The link should take you directly to the book, or you can search by author and title.) In 3-5 weeks there will also be versions on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and other ebook stores. EPUB is readable on Apple Books as well as Nook, Kobo and other readers.
In 2016, when I first published Finding Our Way Home: A Spiritual Journey into Earth Community, I was happy to use an ecologically oriented print-on-demand source for a paperback format. That is still available for $17.99 plus shipping. I have been told it is the kind of book that does well with slow reading, a chapter at a time, with spiritual practices offered at the end of each chapter. Personally, I enjoyed doing the layout and choosing the typeface, and creating all the formatting. I assumed I would also do an e-book at some point, but with chronic illness and not very much energy, it took longer than I expected.
For some mysterious reason, during the last few weeks, I was inspired to get back to it. The first step was reading “how-to guides” at lulu.com. I had to create a new document and undo all the formatting I had previous used, substituting standard formats. I checked all the internet links that showed up in the notes, to make sure they were still functioning. I also updated the author page, but did not change anything else in the content.
My hope is that this new format will make the book more accessible to more readers, both financially and visibly. I especially want to thank my friend Diane K. for her cheerleading and enthusiastic support. Just a little note to mention that when you purchase directly from the publisher more of your payment goes to me as the author. But another way you can help, if the message appeals to you, would be to leave a review wherever you purchased the book. In the end, most of all, in my small way I want to keep fostering a spiritual journey of waking up to interconnection—to the earth, to each other, and to the Mystery within and between all.
It was a quiet week, the robins had finished the nest, but were elsewhere in the yard. But this morning, one of them has come into the nest and has been sitting there a long time. I took a lovely little walk around the yard, just to look at things. There was a sparrow taking a bath in the shallow beach of the pond. The spice bushes were covered with tiny yellow blooms. I greeted the old pine, and the cedar tree, and the pitch pine. The sea kale has emerged, along with rhubarb leaves. The daffodils were blooming.
After breakfast, I went back outside–it is cold and gray today, with rain expected later, but I thought I might just do a few things. After reading some more information on pruning, I finally tackled that aspect of tending to the little apple trees, as well as I was able. Then I transplanted some chives and thyme to keep the baby trees company in their circles–companion plants.
After I came in, I saw the robin wasn’t in the nest, so I went out to check, and was delighted to find this: one blue egg. She came back a short time later, and is sitting there now. After last summer’s disappointments, I know there are no guarantees, but today is a day for hope. May the robin family be blessed with young!
I recently read Sarah Ramey’s memoir, The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness. Published just last year, it is described this way:
“In her harrowing, darkly funny, and unforgettable memoir, Sarah Ramey recounts the decade-long saga of how a seemingly minor illness in her senior year of college turned into a prolonged and elusive condition that destroyed her health but that doctors couldn’t diagnose or treat. Worse, as they failed to cure her, they hinted that her devastating symptoms were psychological. …Ramey’s pursuit of a diagnosis and cure for her own mysterious illness becomes a page-turning medical mystery that reveals a new understanding of today’s chronic illnesses as ecological in nature, driven by modern changes to the basic foundations of health, from the quality of our sleep, diet, and social connections to the state of our microbiomes.”
Book Jacket Cover
I haven’t experienced the horrifying stories she recounts with medical personnel, but I know others who have. I think it helped that I was usually drawn to alternative practitioners, though Sarah had her own horror stories with alternative practitioners. She finally found help with practitioners of Functional Medicine, and my own primary care nurse practitioner is aligned with that field. For that I am grateful.
I identified with the mysterious nature of auto-immune chronic conditions–when I reflected on it, I realized that they have been a part of my life for many years–most recently, Hashimoto’s thyroid disease, SIBO, adrenal fatigue, and borderline diabetes, but earlier in my life there was endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, and gradually developing multiple chemical sensitivities, and multiple food sensitivities. For most of my life, I managed to work and keep my balance, but it became more and more difficult. Finally, when I turned 65, and could access Social Security and Medicare, I retired from my work as a full-time minister.
I wondered at the time if being released from the stress of full-time work might bring me relief from the illnesses, but that was not to be the case. Instead, I was better able to manage living with the illnesses. But it is a delicate balance. If I eat well (for me that means no refined sugar, no gluten, low carb, lots of vegetables, and meat, while avoiding the list of specific foods that give me problems), if I rest when I am weary (which is spending some variable part of every day lying on the couch), if I take certain natural supplements (for example, I take Berberine, which has been shown to be as effective as Metformin for helping blood sugar balance), and if I don’t overdo it anywhere, well then, I have some energy to do things I love, to write, to garden a bit, to learn new things, even the miracle of building our little pond last year.
Sometimes, I can forget that I have these illnesses. Some days I wake in the morning rested and glad to greet a new day. I might have several hours to work on projects. I tend to get more weary and achy as the day goes by. And during these two years so far of COVID, I have been glad for the many opportunities that the world on Zoom provided. But then, something happens that upsets the balance, and I am sunk into a lower level of functioning, just barely able to cook my meals and take care of the basics. Most recently, I think that my body might have reacted badly to my second Shingrix vaccine. The last four weeks have been mostly couch weeks: reading books and watching British mysteries on Roku. I hope that I am emerging from that now. It is not easy to know what upsets the balance–all I can do is respond to it.
Because I am always asking questions about meaning, I appreciated the connection that Sarah Ramey made between our chronically ill bodies, and the larger ecology of the earth. I think about that too. I wonder if my own body is mirroring the afflictions of the earth I love, is somehow sensitive to the larger web–global warming, the prevalence of forever poisons, the loss of communal connections, the ecological balance which human beings have undermined. If that is the case, can I love my body as I love the earth? Can I grant her that self-care that has been neglected for too long?
One aspect that Sarah Ramey sees as critical is our need for human connection. I was reflecting on how for much of my life I made connection through activism, through shared work. I still feel the impulse to act for justice, in small ways, but there are less opportunities now for the connection that used to be a part of it. I have also felt more isolated since retiring, and, of course, since COVID. Maybe I need to learn something new–to nurture connection that is not at all about work or social justice, but about something more elementary. Can I be cherished, not for what I do, but for my being? Can I cherish others in this way? Can I also cherish myself in just this way? Perhaps it will require a kind of spring melting of some other kind of hidden ice. May it be so.
Hard to see, but there is a thin clear layer of ice on the surface of the pond this morning, but more of the winter ice is melting each day. March 26, 2022
River otter eating a fish, within a small rock enclosure in the small pond.
Our area of Maine loves nature news. So when we heard in the news that there were visiting river otters in the ponds at Evergreen Cemetery, we joined many other Portland residents to go to the cemetery to see if we could see them. And we did! We saw this one in one of the small upper ponds, diving under the water to fish, and then emerging in this little rock cave to eat. We also saw one in the big pond, walking on the iced areas in between diving beneath the open water to fish.
River otter on the ice near a thawed opening in the water.
It has been a while since we’ve been to the cemetery. I used to walk over to these ponds frequently, but haven’t had the energy for an hour-long walk lately, so we drove over this time. Sometimes it is wonderful to be alone in the natural world, to see the secrets of plants and animals revealed to a quiet human visitor. But sometimes it is just as wonderful to be with other humans who love these secrets, and can’t resist our animal relatives. There is a sense of kinship with each other, we chat about the sightings, we notice how skilled the otters are at catching fish, we share our tales with new arrivals. There are children and elders, and every age in between. Outside with each other.
Finally, when the otters had hidden behind the back of a little island, I took a walk around the big pond, carefully making my way over tree roots. I couldn’t resist also taking photos of this lovely blue heron–much easier to catch than otters, since it likes nothing better than standing still on its perch on the log.
Great blue heron standing on one foot, perched on a dead log in the pond.
When we first arrived, before we saw the otters, I also happened to catch her scratching her head. Maybe wondering about the sudden abundance of humans wandering around her pond. But not letting that disturb her equanimity and perfect balance.
Blue heron scratching her head, while standing on a log in the pond.
May our animal relatives find all they need to thrive that they may live long upon the earth. May we human animals wake up to our interconnection with all beings, that we may find a way to turn from destruction to mutuality.
Innu embroidery on a leather bag from Lac St. Jean
“Even if you don’t know who your ancestors are, your ancestors know who you are.”
@drxicana Dra. Vanessa M. Bustamante
I think I am coming to the end of myintensivesearch for the family of my Innu third-great-grandmother Marie Madeleine. I have found the most likely Marie Madeleine of the many that I researched, though I cannot have conclusive proof of any connection. Here is what I found.
Marie Madeleine Napeteiashu was baptized June 6, 1803 at Îlets-Jérémie. She was at that time about 7 years old, “or even more,” so her birth would have been 1796 or perhaps a bit earlier. By that time, the priests started recording the father’s Innu name as a surname for the children, so she does not have her own personal Innu name listed. Certainly, she would have had an Innu name that she used for the first seven years of her life and beyond. Her brother Simon Napeteiashu was also baptized at the same time, and said to be about 4 ½ years old, so born in late 1798 or early 1799. Their parents were Napeteiashu, who did not have a Christian name, and Catherine Mitiskue. Their godparents were Simon Tshinapesuan & Marie Madeleine Iskuamiskuskueu, elders in the community who were also parents or godparents to other Marie-Madeleines I researched. Both brother and sister were named for their godparents.
I was able to find an older brother as well, Jacques Nahabanueskum (later also called Jacques Napeteiashu), who was baptized 6/19/1786, at 2 years old, at Îlets-Jérémie, his parents listed, with a slight variation as Nepiteiashu and Catherine Matshiskueu. I think the name Napeteiashu might mean “male fox” if you stretch the spelling a bit—napeiatsheshu. Mitiskue seems a combination of bead/mitish, and woman/skue, so “bead woman.” Matshiskueu means “ugly woman.” I’m not sure about Nahabanueskum. Sometimes the Innu names changed over time.
Sadly, I did not see any further clearly identifiable records for Marie-Madeleine’s parents. Today I spent hours looking at earlier records to see if I could find Catherine. I found many Catherines, but none with her Innu name or a clear link to identify. Unlike for some of the other families I researched, there weren’t multiple prior generations in the baptism accounts; I could open the mystery no further. Perhaps this family’s connection to the priests at the trading posts was more tenuous, at least prior to Jacques, with the father Napeteiashu unbaptized, and the children not baptized until they were 2, 4, or 7 years old. I would have thought there might have been more children between Jacques 1784 and Marie Madeleine 1796, but I could find no record of them. Perhaps might this family have been more tied to their own Innu culture in the forest, and warier of the trading posts?
However, I did find many other records for Marie Madeleine’s brother, Jacques Nahabanueskum. In May 14, 1804, he was married to Monique Peshabanukueu at Îlets-Jérémie, (with his parents identified as Napeteiashu and Catherine Mitiskue.) They had several children baptized through the following years, with their father’s Innu name listed as their surname: Agnes, 1809, Rose, 1810, Marie, 1812, Charles, 1814, all at Îlets-Jérémie, then Jacques 1818 at Riviere Godbout, and an unnamed child who died 1821, then Monique, 1822, at Îlets-Jérémie. Jacques died before 1824, when his widow remarried to Jacques Tshiuteshish, widower of Marie des Anges Tshimatshueu. The children of that Jacques and Marie des Anges would also have been part of an extended family: Simon, Beatrix, Christine, Hélène, and possibly more.
I also found a possible later link for Marie Madeleine’s brother Simon, as Simon Napitaietshunwith Marie Catherine Tshiatshe, parents of a daughter Marie, baptized in 1819, and a son Simon, baptized in 1821, both in Mingan.
One clue that led me to identify this woman as the most likely choice is in the record for the baptism of my own Marie Madeleine’s son Simon, in 1833, at Îlets-Jérémie, where she is identified as “sauvage du dit poste,” which means, translating the racist imagery, “Indian of said post.” And so it seemed to me it might be identifying her place of origin. Of the women on my list of possibilities, within the right time frame, she was the only one who was baptized at Îlets-Jérémie. Now, on the other side, I know that her husband Peter McLeod was a clerk of that post in 1833. But she, along with two other Indian couples baptizing their children were all identified as Indians of that post.
Another reason I find her a compelling possibility is her age. Born about 1796, that would make her about 50 years old at the birth of Marie Madeleine’s last child of record, Marie Sylvie, born in 1846. Late age, but possible. It also means that she would be 53 at the time of her death in 1849, where she was identified as “about 60 years old.” Close enough. I also thought about the fact of her father being unbaptized—and whether that might make it more likely that she would partner with a Protestant man, quite a divide in those days between Catholic and Protestant, but perhaps not unlike the divide between Catholics and the non-baptized. Until the year of her death, when it was conducted in a Catholic ceremony, her marriage to Peter McLeod was not considered a “legitimate” marriage.
A more ambiguous reason I am drawn to her has to do with the network of relationships she seems to be embedded in. My Marie Madeleine named one of her sons, Simon, at Îlets-Jérémie. This would have been the name of her brother, but also another Simon. When her daughter Angèle was baptized in 1836, her godparents were listed as Simon and Angèle, who possibly match a couple named Simon Utshinitsiu and Angèle Neukapne. (No godparents were listed for Simon’s baptism.) This couple appears often in the records, and this Simon is the son of Jacques Tshiuteshish, (whom Monique married after the death of Marie Madeleine’s brother Jacques).
There were several instances of people being in the same place for ceremonies at the same time. Here is just one example. In 1812, on the day after the baptism of Jacques and Monique’s child Marie at Îlets-Jérémie, Simon and Angele’s child Charlotte Utshinitsiu is being baptized there. It is hard to articulate those connections, but to see the names again and again, led to a feeling of interconnection between the families, that might have followed through into the baptisms of my Marie Madeleine’s children Simon and Angele.
The unfortunate thing about this Marie Madeleine is that there is little information about further ancestors. But with her there is a definite link to a place and a community. Might I be related to the place called Îlets-Jérémie/Jeremy Islets? In Innu, it is called Ishkuamishkᵘ, which one source said means “where you can find polar bears” but is also similar to the word for a female beaver ishkuemishkᵘ. Now, to further clarify, generally speaking the Innu went into the woods in fall, winter, and spring to hunt, and came to the posts only in summer, to trade and to connect with the priests who did the baptisms, marriages, burials, and such. And they didn’t necessarily just go to one post, while avoiding others, but they usually were found at ones that were close to each other. So there definitely seemed a connection to Îlets-Jérémie, over many years.
I feel a strange sort of sadness as I let go of further hunting. The records are so sparse, so much is unknown. And yet I have learned so much, I have a sense of the community that I had no awareness of before this search. All I had was her baptismal name, really, and the place where she lived the last few years of her life. And now I have this sense of visiting her world of 200 years ago, learning the places of the trading posts, which were first of all gathering places for Innu people before colonization. I glimpsed the multiple inter-relationships, I scanned hundreds of Innu names, I observed the seasons of gathering and then going into the forest, the births and the deaths. I could see that she was born into a world of mostly Innu people, and by the end of her life in 1849, the increasing number of settlers outnumbered the Innu. But in that world, one joy was she was able to bear many children, and to live to be in her 50s, which was old for that time. My imagination is now richly populated with all of these people I have glimpsed through the strange window of the scratchy French handwriting of the missionary priests.
I come back to the message I received in the middle of this journey. It was like all these women whispered in my ear, “We are all your relatives! As you search for us, and find our stories, we are pleased, and take you under our wings. We are all your relatives.” So I welcome them all now. And remember, “Even if you don’t know who your ancestors are, your ancestors know who you are.”
Someone said that the New Moon in Scorpio has an energy for revealing secrets. During yesterday’s New Moon, a secret emerged in my search for my ancestor Marie Madeleine. I found a marriage record for Anastasie Matshiskueuit, with parents listed as Jean Pierre Utshinitsiu and the deceased Veronique Kaskaneshtshish. These last two were listed as Marie Madeleine Katshisheiskueit’s parents on her baptism record, so at first I thought I had discovered a sister to Marie Madeleine.
Image of original record of Anastasie’s marriage, handwritten in French. [Image from Genealogie Quebec, c. The Drouin Institute]
But as much as I searched, I couldn’t find a baptism record for this Anastasie. Except. Right after Marie Madeleine Katshisheiskueit’s baptism record was the record for Anastasie Kamatshiskueuit, with parents listed as Antoine Tshinusheu and Anne Kukuminau.
Image of baptism records of Marie Madeleine and Anastasie, handwritten in French. [Drouin Institute]
This morning, a realization dawned. The most likely scenario is that the priest who originally recorded the baptisms had made a mistake. He had assigned the wrong child’s name to each set of parents. They were baptized together on the same day. And in fact, in the record, you can almost see that he started to write “Anastasie” where he later wrote “Marie.” It is the marriage record that is more likely to be correct—only Anastasie’s father, Jean Pierre Utshinitsiu, and the parents of the groom—who were her godparents, Simon Tshinapesuan & Marie Madeleine Iskuamiskuskueu, were present for that ceremony.
So the new moon in Scorpio revealed a probable mistake in the original baptism record, and shifted my search back again to Antoine Tshinusheu and Anne Kukuminau as Marie Madeleine Katshisheiskueit’s parents. Ironically, I had started there, because Jean Joseph Roy, or the person following him, had recorded her parents as Antoine and Anne in his Catalogus. Maybe his account had not been an error, but a correction, because he knew the people involved. Or maybe what is revealed is a whole series of mistakes. But the hunt continues, with correction.
Screen shot of the page in the Catalogus generalis totius Montanensium Gentis, with Marie Madeleine and Anastasie [names are in Latin]
Each time something changes in this search, I feel a bit of grief—for the people I thought I had discovered, possible relatives that turn out not to be related to me at all.
But the other night, even before this latest revelation, a small intuition crept into my consciousness about all these Marie Madeleines I am searching. It was like they whispered in my ear, “We are all your relatives! As you search for us, and find our stories, we are pleased, and take you under our wings. We are all your relatives.” That is what I hold onto now, in this search. “We are all your relatives.” And that it pleases them when I search out their stories.
Today I saw four frogs in the pond! When I went outside before breakfast, there was plenty of weeding to do in the orchard, but I was drawn instead to bring my camera and just sit by the pond. When I first walk back to the pond, the frogs often jump from where they’ve been sitting, and swim down into the deeper water. Two of them went under with a little squeak. But there were three plops both yesterday and today, so I knew there were at least three frogs.
Tiny frog #1 floating under reflected ferns yesterday
Tiny frog #1 sitting on a stone at the edge of the pond yesterday.
If I sit quietly next to the pond, eventually they come back to a sitting spot. So I wait. Today I was able to take pictures of three of them while I sat. But I find myself favoring the tiny little frog that was the first to come to the pond. Soon I imagine we will give them names, but for now, I am identifying them by number. This one is so very tiny. At most an inch and a half head to backside, and skinny. Also very friendly. She often perches near where I sit.
Tiny frog #1 swimming closer to where I sit today. You can see her feet clearly against the white of the rocks below.
Tiny frog #1 looks like she is watching me over the edge today.
Yesterday, I was also able to take photos of frog #2, who was a little bigger than frog #1. But today, I saw both #2 and #3 after they re-emerged, and came to sit/float near each other by the little beach. #3 looked so much fatter/bigger than the other two, but then I realized depending on the angle, frog #2 could also be somewhat fat. I think they were about 2 1/2 inches long.
Frogs #2 and #3 on the rocks near the beach.
Close up of Frog #2 from yesterday
Close up from behind of Frog #2 yesterday
So Frog #3 is the largest, and seemingly the shyest. Quickest to jump back into the water, so far. But I got several shots of #3 today. And then, just as I was about to leave, I saw another tiny little frog floating nearby, between me and the beach. So Frog #4. More like #1 in size.
Frog #4 floating near the pickerel weed.
It is just so amazing to watch the wildlife in the pond. I can sit and sit. I also saw dragonfly nymphs again. But eventually I got hungry so I came inside for breakfast. I feel so grateful.
Finding Our Way Home 