It’s early morning at the precipice of summer, and the world outside is all green. The thunderstorms last night brought with them a cool breeze, a welcome break from the heat wave. I can hear the creek across the road rushing with water, and the tall grasses and daisies, gently waving in the breeze, are covered with jewel-like raindrops that glimmer like tiny rainbow prisms in the sunlight. The sound of wind chimes accompanies the chorus of a cacophony of birdsong. If I listen closely, I hear at least eight distinct variations of chirps, squawks, tweets, and calls.
I awoke at dawn to the blaring alarm of my baby’s cries. Bleary eyed, I scooped him up and brought him outside before he could wake my toddler, and it instantly calmed him as he took in the world around him. The air is beginning to thicken with warmth and humidity and my skin drinks in the warm sun as it begins to rise in the sky. All around us, a biodiverse array of plants have started to grow, untamed, and the wild strawberry plants that have been spreading are starting to fruit.
“You could smell ripe strawberries before you saw them, the fragrance mingling with the smell of sun on the damp ground. It was the smell of June, the last day of school, when we were set free, and the strawberry moon, ode’mini-giizis. I’d lie on my stomach in my favorite patches, watching the berries grow sweeter and bigger under the leaves. Each tiny wild berry was scarcely bigger than a raindrop, dimpled with seeds under the cap of leaves. From that vantage point I could pick only the reddest of the red, leaving the pink ones for tomorrow.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
To find and harvest wild strawberries, we need to get really low and look closely. My toddler Roky and I each have small wooden bowls to fill as we set out to harvest berries for a Father’s Day galette. We kneel down around the strawberry patches, bring our faces down low to the ground, and gently pull aside the leaves to reveal little spots of red. When ripe, the berries easily yield to any pressure and release their bright red, sweet, sticky juice. Her little hands are getting better at gingerly picking the tiny berries without crushing them. For each one she picks to put in her bowl, several more go straight into her mouth. She’s excited about all of the strawberries, and she picks the white ones, green ones, and pink and red, whichever ones she can find. She gestures to my bowl and says, “mommy, you got strawberries for me?”
It is the summer solstice and the strawberry full moon, a time of year ripe with possibilities. After the rush of spring, when we were excited to dream up new projects and get active again after a long winter, we may find ourselves with schedules full to the brim. The solstice, which roughly translates to “time stands still” can be a good reminder to take a pause, reflect, and decide which actions are worth taking now and which are worth slowing down on so that we can lay the groundwork for the future. Not everything needs to happen right now, and oftentimes rushing things can bring about mistakes, accidents, and recklessness.
Driving from town back to our home the other day, I slowed down when I saw a wake of turkey vultures gathered around a carcass in the road. As I approached, they flapped away and I saw the devastating image of a small body, a delicate, new and tender spotted fawn, bloodied and dismembered. A few paces away, a doe watched on. It absolutely wrecked me. I drove the rest of the way, at a slowed pace, and felt gutted, thinking of all of the mothers around the world who have to live through the loss of a child.
I know these moments of connection I share with my babies are so fleeting and that nothing is guaranteed in life. Even if things turn out for the best, soon enough my husband and I will find ourselves in a quiet and empty home once the babies have left the nest to pursue their own lives and dreams. And in spite of all of the loss in the world, perhaps because of it, while we have the chance to live with fullness in the moment, I endeavor to live with fullness, richness, and presence in this very moment.
This week, I reduced my screen time by a whopping 78 percent and my goal is to keep screen time to under 2 hours per day. Just this past week alone, I have had so many more chances to live in the presence of such joyous wonder, awe, and discovery. One evening when the opportunity presented itself for Roky to be awake after dark, we took her outside to experience the magic of fireflies. The awe with which she took in this magical sight was palpable. I caught one and let it crawl onto her hand and she was lit up with delight.
After reading many books about the importance of outdoor time for little kids in an age where an overwhelming majority of Americans far surpass their outdoor time with screen time, one of the elements that stuck out to me was this idea that young children possess lantern consciousness as opposed to a more directed, task-oriented spotlight consciousness that enables adults to complete tasks, focus, and prioritize. This is why they can take in and notice so much around them and also why it’s so hard to convince them to put their shoes on, or pick something up, or do any directed task when they’re immersed in their worlds of play.
My husband and I started a Family Nature Club in our town, inspired by Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods and at our outing this month, most of the families had babies as opposed to the usual mix of babies and toddlers. My husband noticed that those of us with babies strapped to us hiked like we would before kids, at a decent pace with an objective to move ahead on the trail. He and Roky kept getting left behind because she was going at the standard toddler pace-- even though she was in a wagon, she wanted to stop much more often to take in the sights around her, or wanted to get out to walk by herself. When we have a group of toddlers with us, we move at a snail’s pace but it really helps the adults shift to a slower, more present state where we notice terrain, flora and fauna we never have before because we’re usually moving so quickly.
When I slow down enough to notice, I hear Roky singing songs in her sweet little voice as she explores the soggy ground after a heavy rain. I watch her splashing in puddles, collecting rocks and putting them into little piles, picking wildflowers and giving them as gifts, trying to feed the moon, and birdies, and slugs. At the end of the day, I see dirt under her fingernails, scrapes and bruises on her knees, sweaty and knotted hair, and a happy, present kid doing exactly as she’s meant to. I just have to slow down and embrace the sweetness.
Our last little unexpected treat this month was that we had strawberries in our CSA pickup this week, after I’d been meditating on them and their wisdom so much. About ten times the size of the wild strawberries, they were still quite small and ruby red in comparison to supermarket strawberries, and I brought them outside for the kids to eat them with reckless abandon. Red sticky juice dripped down their faces and hands and arms and they relished in such a simple yet decadent summertime gift.
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Recipe: Strawberry Galette
Roky helped me make this for Father’s Day - as you can see we never quite collected enough wild ones so we supplemented.
Ingredients:
1 pie crust (homemade is best)
2 cups strawberries (whole if wild or sliced if not)
2 tsp sugar
Zest from 1 lemon and juice from ½ lemon
1 tbsp tapioca flour or cornstarch
1 tbsp turbinado sugar
1 egg, beaten, for egg wash
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
In a bowl, combine strawberries, sugar, lemon zest and juice, and tapioca flour or cornstarch.
Roll out your pie crust onto a sheet of parchment paper.
Dump the strawberry mixture into the center of your pie crust, leaving 1.5-2 inches on each side. Fold up each side to form a barrier to keep the filling inside, while leaving the center open.
Brush the egg wash all over the edges of the pastry crust, and sprinkle with turbinado sugar.
Transfer galette on parchment paper to a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 25-30 minutes, until golden and bubbling.
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Spell:
Try a journaling exercise. Visualize time slowing way down. Sit in a meditative state, and find a recording of a guided meditation if needed. Recall a memory when you were fully immersed in the moment, and not distracted thinking about the past or the future. Can you remember the sights, sounds, textures? Write down everything you can remember sensing in your immediate surroundings. How did you stay present to the moments unfolding around you, and how can you take that energy with you so that you can experience life in the present? Meditate on what it means to fully take in your surroundings in the present moment and carry that energy with you today and through the weekend. How can you make your full moon and solstice special and keep the memory alive for years to come?