~ Make, Forage Photography ~

Welcome to my ‘Make’ album. Foraging for me is more than just gathering wild food and making good use of it, it’s a way of life that sees bounty and beauty everywhere, that follows a trail of bread crumbs or seeds back into a deeper understanding of why we are here.
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I’m really leaning into what Forage Photography means to me, and wanting to tell the story about how @Forage.followthetrail came to be. Somehow, somewhere we lost the trail, pulled away from our intimate relationship to the land, how we make food, make beauty, make meaning.
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All, around me I see makers who are repairing this and I am so inspired! What happens when human hands gather, tend, create in a reciprocal, loving relationship with the earth? This! These are more than just local hand crafts, or wild crafts, they are stories that weave belonging, responsibility, wisdom into the objects, foods, ceremonies that we need to survive and thrive on a planet that is calling loudly for us to change they we consume. Stay tuned for more images. Come visit me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/forage.followthetrail/ or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/applestarphoto
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Deep gratitude to the many beautiful souls who are tending the earth, and sharing the gifts of their making hands; to the wisdom traditions and teachers who are passing on these vital crafts; to all our relations who continue to give of their bodies so that we can make clothing, food, shelter, art, ceremony; to all those who are gathering around the children these days to take them outdoors to make connections and fall in love with the land again; and with deepest thanks, humble gratitude to the unceded, ancestral Coast Salish peoples who have tended these lands for as long as anyone can remember so that I can live, work and play here.

~ the river below the river ~

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?

Mary Oliver, Blackwater Pond

I’ve been thinking about the Waters lately, how grateful I am for their flow, their kissing leaves, drumming on roofs and tarmac to get our attention, caressing the grooves in bark, running down trunks, into gullies, a million drops uniting to flow down deep into the loamy earth, quenching deep roots, carrying all that is nutritious and vital with them to feed underground streams and aquifers, following their original instructions to join the river of life. As we, in the Northern Hemisphere, enter the dark, fallow season, how can we tap into the teachings of the precious waters ~ the river below the river, ‘rio abacho rio’, as Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls it, this subterranean knowing?

“I feel like the earth, astonished at fragrance borne in the air, made pregnant with mystery from a drop of rain.” Rumi

_{^{“Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down.”}}

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

“Each [human] has potential access to Rio Abajo Rio, this river beneath the river. [They arrive] there through deep meditation, dance, writing, painting, prayermaking, singing, drumming, active imagination.” Clarissa Pinkola Estes

“From ‘the river beneath the river, ‘ I learnt to leap and keep going, to catch the verve of shout places, and if escape be needed, to make myself fine as mist. I learnt from rivers, that going to the edges will lead to Plato’s cave, that slots filled with debris often hold the oldest grandfather trouts, and that the middle of the river like the middle of so much in life, is often not the deepest.” Clarissa Pinkola Estes, The Soul is a River, The River is a Soul

“Silent friend of many distances, feel
how your breath enlarges all of space.
Let your presence ring out like a bell
into the night. What feeds upon your face

grows mighty from the nourishment thus offered.
Move through transformation, out and in.
What is the deepest loss that you have suffered?
If drinking is bitter, change yourself to wine.

In this immeasurable darkness, be the power
that rounds your senses in their magic ring,
the sense of their mysterious encounter.

And if the earthly no longer knows your name,
whisper to the silent earth: I’m flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Silent friend of many distances, feel

All images are copyright taken by myself as part of a wild being project except for the one of myself gathering bones by the bog, taken by Chantal Solomon, who I am deeply grateful for… it was a big step for me to embody my journey at the waters’ edge in this way, gathering bones form the wild. I am so grateful as well to all those protrayed in the images for their courageous commitment to their own wild paths, inner tacking, restoring relations to the earth through their gifts. Thank you! I thank also the rains, rivers, marsh, ponds, lakes and seas of the unceeded ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, where I work, live and play. #waterislife Last of all, how can I forget the poets and storytellers who share their #songlines with us so that we may find our ways home. With deep, humble love and gratitude, I thank Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Mary Oliver, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rumi and others whose words have not yet reached my ears.

with wild love, Belinda White

Forage ~ follow the trail….

“And the speck of my heart in my shed of flesh and bone, began to sing out, the way the sun would sing if the sun could sing, if light had a mouth and a tongue, if the sky had a throat, if god wasn’t just and idea but shoulders and a spine, gathered from everywhere, even the most distant planets, blazing up. Where am I? Even the rough words come to me, quick as thistles. Who made your tyrant’s body, your thirst, your delving, your gladness? Oh tiger, oh bone-breaker, oh tree on fire! Get away from me. Come closer.” Mary Oliver
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I’m in love with Mary Oliver, and a courtship with the land! With deep gratitude to the writers, the giants, whose shoulders we stand on, to my dear friend, Qristine, who does love a great questing, to the plant and tree beings ~ today, Oregon Grape, who offer medicine gifts at every turn, and, to the unceded ancestral lands of the Coast Salish Peoples, Cowichan, Tsawwassen, Tsawout, Malahat and Tseycum where this magical moment was captured by Apple Star Photo. For more #wildcrafted #inspirations, visit me on Instagram @Forage.followthetrail
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