Week 18: The Great Unfurling
Opening the Fractal Core
Reflection
As the last week of April draws to a close and the door to May slowly opens, the straddling of time, with one foot in yesterday and one in tomorrow, we approach the micro-season of the Western Sword Fern.
With its ‘fiddlehead’ fronds emerging with their distinctive spiral unraveling to their full expression; the young crosier are covered in silvery-brown paper scales that fall away as the foliage matures.
These scales are a perfect representation of sacred boundaries allowing the plants most vulnerable parts protection until they are fully grown.
Their habitat in the darkness and moisture of the forest floor exemplify the analogy of finding light in the dark and can be utilized as support in our own shadow work.
Each fern blade carries a blueprint of all of the information needed to grow into its full realization. Trusting this internal roadmap mirrors our need to trust in our own inherent wisdom to unfold when conditions call for it.
This unfolding occurs on its own timeline reminding us that while change may seem imperceptible at times, incremental gains may still be occurring even if the entire picture cannot be seen.
Evidence & Ecology
The Western Sword Fern is ancient. It has lived a million lives since it first drifted its spores into the wind during the Devonian era, over 300 million years ago. This ancient method of reproduction intimately unites modern forests and these primordial lineages.
That it has survived, and thrived to inhabit many corners of this planet, proves it’s blueprint for resilience is one to be held as a touchstone.
Taking up residence on the forest floor with towering trees and flowering bushes as community kin, it thrives where others may fail. Growing in these shaded environs becoming verdant and vibrant green, it offers itself as an example of persisting even through our shadowy parts.
The fronds of this ancient being can reach up to 1.8 metres. With their growth upwards and outwards these plants often produce a ‘fountain’ effect as their foliage drapes to create needed shelter for ground-nesting birds and small mammals. A selfless refuge created simply through its existence, proving once again the complete interdependence of the natural world.
What threads of your history, travelling along the mycelium of time connect you to your family or community of origin? What wisdom or patterns do they carry through to you? How has your life unfolded as a result of these connections to the past?
How have your shadow parts revealed themselves to you? Have you embraced these aspects? What has your shadow self shown you about accepting all of our parts? Even those we want to hide from the world.
Where have you shown up as ‘shelter’ and safety for your family and community? How have you accepted that your growth may mean providing support for others to reach their potential?
Reach back into your lineage. Connect with your ancestors. Although not seen, they are always here to comfort and serve you.
Embodying Practice
Embodied Nature Meditation
Pollen Release
Begin in a seated position.
Allow your sit bones to become heavy and deeply connect with the earth.
Visualize yourself surrounded by western sword ferns, the dappled light of the forest surrounding you, as it warms the soil and plants.
Take a moment to connect with your breath……
Story of Place
A Conversation with the Season
The Green Cathedral: Unfurling the Sword Fern
If you close your eyes slightly and allow the darkness and damp of the understory to occupy your senses, you might just think you’ve been dropped into a time, millions of years ago, when ferns ruled the world.
A cornerstone of the entire Pacific Northwest understory, these ubiquitous plant beings carpet the forest floor. Filling in the open spaces between trees and bushes. Offering cover to small animals and birds in the shifting emerald light of the BC south coast.
There will be that perfect day. Some months from now. When you are in the forest. At the height of summer. In the heat of the day. The sun is streaming in through the trees at the sterotypical oblique angle. The shaft of light between the trees illuminates millions of tiny flecks floating in the air. As if someone had been shaking out their rug.
But if you look closer, most specifically closer to the ground, you will notice that this dust is acutally fern spores, poofing into the air all around you. Like tiny explosions the spores dramatically expel into the air and then delicately fall back to the earth, or your shoes and arms. The air is saturated with the contents of the round clusters, the sori, on the back of the leaf.
At this moment you are immersed in an eons long process of trust, hope and possibility. You are witness and recipient of a ferns desire to reproduce. Their asexual reproduction hints at their ancient origins, and connects you to an earth millions of years in the past.
That time will arrive in a few short weeks. Today it is still spring and the Wester Sword Ferns are uncoiling their slender and feathery bodies in a glen of dappled sunlight, birdsong afloat in varying decibels, and the scent of wet, warming soil.
In this time of hope and potential, the growth of spring, the ground begins to uncoil from the solidity of the winter months, causing everything in that forest to stretch and yawn in a collective wake up. The next generation emerges….
The Invitation
Nature Kinship
Weekly nature connection practices aligned seasonally to engage with your locale. Encouraging immersion, appreciation and spiritual attunement with the more than human world around you.
Always remember to enjoy these practices within the bounds of your physical and ecological limits (do not sit outside when it’s -40, or walk on slippery surfaces), practice “leave no trace” and mindful reciprocity (take only what you need, ask permission from the earth, and only leave what is naturally biodegradable)
The Art Practice
Leaf Casting
If available to you, take a sketchbook into the forest. If that’s not feasible, find a picture of a Western Sword Fern online that speaks to you.
Gently and without disturbing other creatures or plants in the vicinity, locate an unfurling fiddlehead.
This practice is not about creating perfection. Instead it is about connecting with the plant and allowing your body to come into alignment with its energy. Feeling it in your sinewy flesh and electrical impulses.
Keep your eyes on the fern's spiral and let your pen move on the paper without looking down. A practice likened to blind contour drawing….
A Final Note
Closing Invocation
Trees do not force their sap/ nor does the flower push its bloom
Singing the Earth
All photos copyright
Nature. Connected.
