The Grandmothers

Growing up on an island has the effect of making your world seem small. The sea is the edge of everything. Everything has limits, you have limits too. Libraries don't overflow and you cannot just walk and keep walking. There is a limit to where you can go.

My grandmother however, dreamed of traveling to far off places, to oddly shaped mountains in Fujian, to forgotten cities in Siem Riep, to see snow leopards in Darjeeling.

My grandmother’s name was Eithne which felt like Grace whispering when you said it out loud. Inside her all her dreams churned and burned fiercely and her imaginings were long, far reaching and powerful. I loved her with my whole heart and her dreams influenced me. They gave me permission to journey and to travel.

I wish I could have told her about the water festival in Mandalay. The two weeks we spent with a large female elephant in our back garden in Kerala. I would have told her that in the middle of India there is a sacred city, forgotten and deserted where each temple pillar sounds a different note.

I would have told her that a while ago when the nights were getting colder and shorter, I made a journey that changed my life. It was Autumn on Panther Mountain, one of the high Catskill peaks and the hardwood trees were on fire. Beech, maple and birch ablaze with the colours of the fall.

There on that land there are creeks and ridges and valleys with names like Fox Hollow and Hatchery Hollow. Low down near the creeks that join together, Eastern Hemlock bark was logged for it’s tannins and the area quarried for bluestone.

If you climb gradually you can see balsam fir and finally near the very top, red spruce on Big Indian Peak.

Two creeks join to form a circle around an ancient geological site. It is believed that about 375 million years ago a meteorite crashed here creating an enormous impact site that now lies nearly 3000 feet below the surface and on which we are now standing.

Panthers may have roamed here too but they are long gone.

We were here on this ancient site to watch the arrival of women from all around the world and I am scanning for the dark red of her robes, I am excited to see her but she is not alone. They are arriving from each of the four directions. They are coming from their homes in Tibet, India, the Amazon, North America, Central America, Alaska and West Africa.

They arrive by train and plane and cars. They bring their translators, their music and their prayers. Their languages come together in greetings of laughter.

They are the grandmothers, hair grey and plaited, scarfed back from their face, grief and smile lines drawn into their songs, each wearing their native dress, their own paint and earth stones.

They let the men tend the fires whilst they tended the business at hand; the survival of the next seven generations.

That first day the grandmothers call a town hall meeting and announce their place in the grand scheme of things. One by one other women notable by name, stand and announce themselves and what lands they have journeyed from; Gloria Steinham. Alice Walker. Helen Norburg. Carole Mosley Braun, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo.

Every woman here calls her name and where she comes from. We have all come here together to support the grandmothers in their quest to preserve the beauty of the world, her sacred mountains and rivers. We have come to witness their pledge to protect the ancient traditions, their indigenous plants that are medicines for their people. We have come to learn their ways and to support them and to keep the peace.

They raised their voices to speak of the 11th hour and our need to act swiftly. To consider not only our one life but the life of the next seven generations. To consider our children and our children’s children.

They gather together and cry, a collective wail that is deep and filled with suffering. The whole town hall reels under the weight of what they can see.

This was the year 2004 and I was attending the first ever grandmother council gathering. We had been raising money for Dongyu Gatsal Ling a nunnery for Himalayan women in the Drukpa Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and founded by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, author of A Cave In The Snow and Reflections On Mountain Lake.

We were here to meet with Tenzin Palmo, to sit with her and listen. Instead we had gathered and raised our voices to sing praises to the world. We gathered as sisters in her name to remember our beautiful mother and to honour the wisdom of our grandmothers.

It is years since I danced in that circle but the grandmothers' wisdom has guided me to build a practice of wholeness.

Artemis is about singing the praises of the world, of being alive to her beauty. In many ways she is a prayer to what is possible, to regenerate not just the world around us but the world within us.

Artemis is a simple prayer, to make what is good better.

Gratitude

Grandma Agnes Baker Pilgrim served as the head of the council of the thirteen grandmothers until she died on November 27th, 2019 at age ninety five. She traveled extensively sharing the message of the council.

She was at the time the oldest living Takelma Indian and had been in her life a logger, a boxer, a musician, a barber in jail and a stock car driver.

Grandmother Agnes said ‘Your best first medicine is water. Guard it with your life for without it you cannot live.’

She also said ‘You got baggage, quit carrying it around. Your can’t change anything from a minute ago. All you can do is forgive it.’

Grandmother Aggie meant this last one. She had felt unworthy of doing good work, of giving a voice to the voiceless. After battling with cancer she asked her creator for more time to do something worthy. Grandmother Aggie worked for decades to remove dams on the Rogue River and succeeded. She re established the sacred salmon ceremony, a ceremony to welcome, bless and thank the returning salmon and to teach their wisdom. She brought back the ceremony to South Oregon and is known to some locals as The Sacred Keeper of the Salmon Ceremony.