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Barbara

@euromoon

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Photos of nature, books, travel, and other interests.
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So there are just giant, finger-sized, yellow slugs out there in this wild world who enjoy gorgeous coastal views and slide around in their own goo as their primary mode of transit ✨🍌✨

I spent a couple of days searching for banana slugs in the forest before realizing it was too dry and that these dudes were out early in the morning on the patio at the Inn. So I got to meditate with them each morning and totally marveled at their absurd and magical existence!

Banana Slugs—I’m an enthusiast!! Here are some fun facts I’ve learned about them over the years:
✨Banana Slugs are the second largest species of slug in the world. They can grow up to 10 inches long and weigh up to 4 ounces.
✨Their slime can absorb up to 100x their weight in water, which is one of their defense mechanisms. Imagine trying to chew and swallow something that just keeps getting larger and slimier and stickier.
✨There is a numbing agent in their slime, also a defense mechanism. A local told me she and her friends used to dare each other to kiss Banana Slugs as kids growing up. She said it felt like applying lidocaine to your lips.
✨They can use their mucus to stick to and travel across difficult terrain and can use it like a bungee chord to dangle on.
✨They are some of the great decomposers of the forest, transforming leaves, mosses, and droppings into nutrient-rich soil.

That the Banana Slug exists is proof enough for me of the creativity and humor the universe offers us 💛 taken in Trinidad, California by @euromoon

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17 days ago

A few nights at the most beautiful inn on the edge of the continent was magical: the slow sunsets, lush gardens, home made breakfasts and delicious afternoon desserts, all the tea one could ever imbibe, the barking of sea lions perched on rocks, and of course these dazzling views of the edge of the world.

@turtlerocksoceanfrontinn has been on my destination list for a looong time and proved to be the perfect home base for exploring all of the different state parks that make up “The Redwoods” in Humboldt County. taken in Turtle Rocks Oceanfront Inn by @euromoon

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23 days ago

The story of all living beings is right here on the forest floor and up in the tree canopy. Where one falls, space is opened for the next generation to grow tall and strong from the light that pours through what’s absent.

Nature is truly my greatest teacher 💚 taken in Founders' Grove by @euromoon

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25 days ago

The Coast Redwood tree is iconic for growing in giant columns into the tallest trees on planet Earth.

But the fact that these Coast Redwoods grew differently, shaped by harsh salt air and strong winds, is exactly what sets them apart. In fact, the unique growth pattern of these “Candelabra” Redwoods is what spared them from logging in the late 1800s when roughly 97% of old growth Redwoods forests were clear cut for lumber.

In northern Mendocino County, CA where the Lost Coast trail winds through remote wilderness and the Pacific Coast Highway turns inland for lack of domesticatable land, the Enchanted Forest is perched cliffside and the Candelabra Redwoods grow as a reminder that our unique shape and character is exactly matched to the conditions in our environment so that we can keep thriving, reaching toward the sun; exactly what makes us worth marveling at; a place where our flaws become our irreplicable and irreplaceable beauty. taken in Candelabra Redwoods, Shady Dell by @euromoon

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a month ago

🥰 Just when we thought the nonstop news cycle and ever-present bad news of the world was going to break us, we sang together. And we kept singing. And it made us strong! 💪

@euromoon carried this song to us from this summer’s Sisters in Harmony Retreat in Santa Cruz, CA where Debbie Nargi-Brown debuted it.

It’s about finding strength and resilience in songs that are simply with us. About how singing together can help us keep going. And it’s so joyful to sing it here with Singing Resistance Austin members at the Texas State Capitol as a way to nourish our efforts.

🎶 Lyrics:
I've got songs in my pocket. I know I'm gonna rock it with songs I can carry on.
I've got songs in my pocket. I know I'm gonna rock it with songs I can right the wrongs.
Second Layer:
I've got songs. You've got songs. Let's sing all night long.
I've got songs. You've got songs. Let's sing to be strong.

By: Debbie Nargi-Brown

We're meeting at the Texas State Capitol on Thursdays from 6-7:30 till the election. See you next week with even more songs for your pocket!

PS. Check your voter registration!

#singingresistance #singingforjoy #singforjustice #communitysinging strongertogether💪 by @euromoon

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a month ago

While not critically endangered, the Ghost Pipe is a rather rare sighting, especially on the West coast where aggressive logging decimated the old growth forests that Ghost Pipes require. Timing also plays a role since these little beings spend around 51 weeks of the year underground, only emerging briefly to flower. So I was delighted when this elegant and mysterious Ghost Pipe introduced herself from the side of the trail!

The Ghost Pipe is unique for the way they nourish themselves. Deep in a forest aswarm with flora and fauna that feed themselves through the process of photosynthesis, the Ghost Pipe does not rely on capturing sunlight and turning it into nutrients. It lacks chlorophyll entirely, hence its waxen-white appearance. Instead, the Ghost Pipe taps into the mycorrhizal network, or the underground network of fungus and tree roots, and uses the sugars and carbons passed there to live.

In a world of autotrophs, the Ghost Pipe is a mycoheterotrophs.

These days I’m thinking a lot about what nourishes my being. Healthful food that energizes and supports the functions of my Earth suit, movement that unwinds and strengthens my vessel. And also rituals that keep my spirit well—singing with my people, communing with nature, snuggling my pup Wolfy, meditating. Some of the practices that enrich me took time to identify only because they were out of the mainstream, not something our western culture offered us as nourishing, practices that needed discovering and remembering.

But, like the Ghost Pipe with its unusual way of tapping into life source and its slightly hermit tendencies, our individual ways of nourishing ourselves help us blossom into beautiful, otherworldly beings.

How do you nourish your being? 🤍 taken in Silver Falls State Park by @euromoon

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2 months ago

The ritual of blowing on a dandelion and making a wish as the seeds disperse on the wind is pure magic. The abundance and possibilities of childhood are present. We are working with Mother Earth and her elements to make our ideas bigger.

I’ve noticed, as I’ve gotten older and more focused on the “goals” of “adult life,” that some of the creativity and naturalism infused in childhood wishes have become elusive. I had become disconnected.

Recently, my imagination had been tied down to a certain kind of outcome. A certain type of topic. My curiosity had been confined to only a particular type of logical thinking. Effort was being applied to figure out only problems instead of marveling or wondering or admiring or dreaming up possibilities. Co-creating with our Earth was a distant consideration.

Seeing this simple and very common offering from Mother Earth reminded me that the purity of wishing, ritual, and possibility is never too far away.

What is it that you are wishing for? taken in Green Mountain Retreat - Los Gatos by @euromoon

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3 months ago

Summer moments leading up to Litha 🧡 by @euromoon

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4 months ago

Me thinks the families from the nearby playground are feeding the turtles.

Or perhaps they are enchanted to approach humans and are silently asking for a rhyme or a riddle.

Or maybe I am a magnetic turtle goddess activated by the Blue Moon and they are swimming up to greet me in recognition.

Or perhaps these turtles are simply social, ready to spill the turtle tea.

Or (definitely) they are thanking me for patiently escorting one of their kind up my busy neighborhood street last week as she safely scuttled toward her destination, the whole time keeping a watchful eye on me.

No one really knows.
And the turtles will not explain themselves.

But one thing is for certain: gently challenging logical thinking by asking “what if?” is so valuable and fun and even a little vulnerable!

Logic is but one way in a plethora of ways to relate to the world. Opening up to possibilities outside of the well worn pathways of our everyday understanding, the confines of reasoning, and the sometimes invisible ways we are conditioned by our culture to think acknowledges our limits as a species and as an individual to encounter the vastness of the universe.

Human eyeballs detect zero colors on the ultraviolet spectrum, a tool used by bees and birds and butterflies to locate resources. The human ear does not register ultrasound or infrasound, frequencies that whales and dolphins and elephants use to communicate. The human anatomy does not sense the pull of electromagnetic fields which guide migration and spawning patterns that thousands of species experience.

Creative thinking, curiosity, possibility, and even a little magic can be so helpful and freeing in the ways we consider our reality. ✨ by @euromoon

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4 months ago

Native to our neighbor Louisiana (among other US states) but not technically native to Texas, the American Basket Flower is found at the woodland’s edge in partial sunlight.

This isn’t a wildflower I commonly see, but it sure is an eye catcher! She looks similar to a thistle, but without the prickly anatomy. taken in Barton Creek Greenbelt by @euromoon

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5 months ago

I first met Malin by full moonlight and was delighted by her round body, larger than life geometric face, stoic presence in the woods, and her wild woman shaggy hair and necklaces. Two days later, I took my pup @wolfyboiatx on a walk to meet her.

Malin held an offering bowl, her eponymous fountain. Her reminder that we are called to share our resources with the animals and beings among whom we live. This is so out of balance right now.

Why does losing a whimsical, wooden art installation that sat inside @peasepark feel so much larger than a fire that destroyed it?

In her memoir Joy Ride, @susanorlean reflects on the loss of the Los Angeles Library in a 1986 fire that destroyed 400,000 books and damaged 700,000 more.
“I now understood why the loss of a library is such collective sorrow: A library is our shared memory, the shared stories and wisdom of a community. A library isn’t merely a municipal building, although it is that, too, and it isn’t merely a valuable resource for books, although it is certainly that as well. Libraries are something more than that, something essential and emotional, the public soul. Maybe we recognize ourselves in them.”

Malin’s Fountain by artist @thomasdambo was a symbol for care, for the power of community, for our interspecies interdependence, and for the creative strength of femininity. She was part of our Austin public soul, so to speak.

And so now, there is communal grief in losing such a symbol of our shared values, the stuff that makes life feel good and whole and connected.

I hope Malin’s loss will bring into focus the power of public art, of a community defined by care, and of the ways our values bring us together more than they tear us apart.

“Sometimes, the summer times are dry
Sometimes, the sky will cry
Sometimes, the fountains full of rain
Sometimes, an empty drain

‍Sometimes are good for summer birds
Sometimes are cursed with thirst

So it always makes a difference when
You fill the fountain up again” (poem from the artist’s website) by @euromoon

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5 months ago

Some finds from a ramble in the Blue Ridge Mountains ⛰️ taken in Craggy Pinnacle by @euromoon

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5 months ago