REVERB15 (Day 2): Epiphany of loving rocks

SPRAWLED ON THE CRETACEOUS SOIL OF THE BADLANDS. This photo taken by my paleontologist husband, Chiboogamoo, in July 2014 in Montana, pictures me, Hallelujah Truth, relaxing into a landscape where dinosaur bones of mothering dinosaurs are weathering out of the surfaces beneath me. I have painted characters from my "Cosmos of Hallelujah" on top of the image to incorporate the depths of my psyche with deep time of the Earth. (Collaboration by Tony Martin and Ruth Schowalter)

REVERB15 (Day 2) PROMPT: What surprised you this year?

Dear Readers, fellow Pilgrims of Life, many things caught me off guard this past year. Some were unpleasant, like my dear friends Chris and Mark leaving our beloved city of Decatur, Georgia, and moving northward to New Jersey and artist friend Cecelia Kane making what seems to be a permanent move out west to Portland, Oregon. How terribly I miss them. Others surprises were delightful like the flow of love that continues to well up and out of me to the world as a result of the "forgiveness" work I've been doing in my life. But the one surprise I want to write about today for the second day of REVERB15 is the discovery I had about a specific connection I have to our glorious EARTH.

Let's call her MOTHER EARTH!

THE RISING. After months of creating images of an archetypal mother nurturing Hallelujah Truth at the beginning of 2015, I experienced a psychic rebirth. This younger version of Hallelujah emerged with the mother no longer being human but being MOTHER EARTH. This dual emergence surprised me powerfully. (Art by Hallelujah Truth, aka Ruth Schowalter)

In the past, I would balk when asked by others which elements of the Earth I felt most connected to. Oceans and lakes or mountains and deserts? Water or Land? Fire or Air? I LOVE them all. End to my answer.

In 2015, my past experiences from the time I was a child to the present with rocks, minerals, mountains crystalized. I LOVE ROCKS. Their vast and varied shapes, colors, and surfaces. The way they feel under my feet and against my body. The way mountains create horizons holding the sky and earth. The rich information they hold about TIME and all of CREATION. Is it any wonder that I married a geologist/paleontologist? 

EPIPHANY AT DAVIDSON-ARABIA NATURE PRESERVE. This past May, I had my epiphany about how deeply in love I am with ROCKS at this nature preserve a 30-minute drive from my home in Decatur, Georgia. (photo by Chiboogamoo)

In May after our trip to Golden, Colorado, and before Chiboogamoo's foot surgery, we ventured out for a hike at the Davidson-Arabia Nature Preserve, a quick 30-minute drive from our home. It was there on that warm May afternoon, that I had my EPIPHANY of LOVING ROCKS. POP! And like that I knew I was in a deeper stage of love. Mature. Ripened. An emotion that took a life time to cultivate culminating in a moment. I danced then and there on behalf of my relationship with the ROCKS.

Oh there is more to tell how I spent a life time coming to this realization. And even in the months before my embodied knowing, my knowledge and experience of how we humans are connected to the earth was deepening and growing. In conjunction with going to Dinosaur Ridge in Golden, Colorado, with my dear paleontologist husband to look at dinosaur tracks, I was also reading Malidoma Patrice Some's book, The Healing Wisdom of Africa.
 

DINOSAUR RIDGE, GOLDEN, COLORADO. That's me with my Chiboogamoo on my left, and another paleontologist on my left, Martin Lockley. Where we walked, the dinosaurs walked. We are all connected. (photo by Karen Chin, another paleontologist).

Alice Walker describes Some's book as "The way back to the memory of who we once were; the way forward to who we are or might become." Between my physical experience of walking on the same rocks that the dinosaurs walked and reading about nature, ritual and community in Some's book things were congealing for me to have my epiphany.

EMBRACED BY NATURE. Hallelujah Truth embraces herself while being embraced by nature. Where dinosaurs walked, we walk. Through time--deep time--we are all connected. (Art by Hallelujah Truth)

As I conclude this blog post and get ready to head to Florida from Alabama for my Uncle Ken's funeral, I feel a deep connection to my ROCKS, the Earth, to you all. Blessings to you all!

That's Coffee With Hallelujah! SOUL BLOG with me and tell me your own answer to the question: What surprised you this year? What do you think about my epiphany? What is your connection to the EARTH. How do you know?

HELP US GET TO MONTANA IN JULY: Buy quality prints of our Cretaceous-themed artwork

HELP US GET TO MONTANA. Tony Martin and I need travel funds to get to Montana for his research in July. Exciting things will be taking place on the Egg Mountain dinosaur-nest site near Choteau. His colleague from Montana State University, David Varricchio, will be there with a barrage of other scientists, students, and volunteers. I would like to join Tony after I finish my Life Practice Program with InterPlay mid-July. Tony often pays for his own research travel, and because I am in a career transition right now, we want to support this trip by selling giclée prints of our artwork. Up until now, we have been too shy to market these prints. Will you purchase our Cretaceous-themed art?

You can help support fossil research and science-communication outreach by buying one or both of these prints: “Mother Earth, Mother Dinosaur,” by Ruth Schowalter and “Parasitoid: In Rocks, No One Can Hear You Scream,” by Anthony Martin. Both of these artworks relate to Tony’s fossil discoveries from Cretaceous Period rocks in Montana. The sales of these prints will be used to support travel expenses for Tony and Ruth to go to Montana and work at the Egg Mountain dinosaur-nest site near Choteau, Montana, this July (2014). Tony will be working as an ichnologist with David Varricchio (Montana State University) and a group of other scientists and university volunteers. Ruth will document some of the science happenings at the site through photographs and blogging, and will be looking for inspirations for future art projects.

Each signed giclée print is $200 individually, but both purchased together are $350 plus $10 for shipping and handling. The word, “giclée,” is a fine art term which describes a printing process to reproduce an original piece of art work. Printed on high-quality watercolor paper, these giclée reproductions are made with fade-resistant archival inks, which will last 200 years (but not as long as the dinosaur bones and insect cocoons). Contact us via Facebook (Tony or Ruth) in a private message if you are interested in purchasing these colorful interpretations about the Cretaceous.

MOTHER EARTH, MOTHER DINOSAUR, by RuthTruth, aka Hallelujah Truth, Ruth Schowalter

About “Mother Earth, Mother Dinosaur”: This image has appeared in international paleontological presentations, having been printed on commemorative t-shirts for the 2008 “Dinosaur Dreaming” dig-season in Victoria, Australia, and published in the 2010 book, Dinosaur Dreaming: Exploring the Bass Coast of Victoria. “Mother Earth, Mother Dinosaur” also graced the front cover of a book published in Spain, A Burrowing Dinosaur, a bilingual text published by Fundacion Conjunto Paleotologico de Teruel- Dinopolis. In 2011, it was exhibited in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, at Fernbank Museum of Natural History and was selected for and shown at the Science Online 2012 conference at Duke University, North Carolina.

“Mother Earth, Mother Dinosaur” reflects Ruth Schowalter’s interpretation of a new species of dinosaur reported in the March 2007 Proceedingsof the Royal Society of London B. An adult dinosaur was found with two juveniles in their burrow, where they had remained for 95 million years. Scientists had thought that some dinosaurs should have burrowed in the Cretaceous; however, until Oryctodromeus cubicularis (which means "digging runner of the lair")—the scientific name assigned to this burrowing “mother” dinosaur—no evidence had been found to support that hypothesis.

As a painter, she was given special insights into this animal and its burrow with young because her husband, Anthony Martin of Emory University, was a co-discoverer of the new species with David Varricchio of Montana State University and Yoshihiro Katsura of the Gifu Prefecture Museum of Japan. Interpreting behavior from the fossil record is challenging, yet these findings indicate that mothers stayed with their young and maintained some kind of family structure. The findings also show evidence that mammals and insects co-existed with the dinosaurs. Small structures suggesting insect burrows and a small mammal burrow were found off the main burrow of the digging runner’s.

In painting this image of “Mother Earth, Mother Dinosaur,” Ruth wanted to convey both a “womb,” where the dinosaurs were more than likely born, and a “tomb,” where they died when it appears the burrow was flooded. She also wanted to give the feeling of the “mother earth” holding these creatures for all this time to be given a new birth during our life times.

This giclée reproduction of “Mother Earth, Mother Dinosaur” is smaller (15” x 17.5”) than the original painting (18” x 22”).  The original “Mother Earth, Mother Dinosaur” was done in acrylic on wood. These reproductions, which are printed on high-quality watercolor paper, are signed and dated by artist RuthTruth (aka Ruth Schowalter) and her husband, paleontologist Anthony Martin (one of the three co-discoverers of Oryctodromeus cubicularis).

 

Parasitoid: In Rocks, No One Can Hear You Scream,  by Anthony Martin, author of Dinosaurs Without Bones.

About “Parasitoid: In Rocks, No One Can Hear You Scream,” by Anthony Martin. Darwin once said, “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.” With that quotation in mind, this artwork is inspired by fossil insect cocoons from 75-million-year-old rocks in Montana (USA) associated with dinosaur nests that hold evidence of parasitoid behavior. This behavior is typically expressed by a smaller insect – such as a wasp – preying on the egg, larvae, pupae, or adults of another species of insect. The figures depicted in this artwork show the stages of parasitoid behavior represented by the fossils (from left to right): pupa --> exit hole --> exit burrow in a larger host pupa. These fossils thus give us insights into how long ago this behavior had evolved in insects.

The artwork and title are meant to evoke memories of the Alien movies, which featured an antagonist creature that used a parasitoid-like strategy to prey on its human victims. The artwork and the science behind it are also meant to echo Darwin’s struggle to reconcile his spiritual beliefs with the factual basis of natural selection.

The giclée print of “Parasitoid: In Rocks, No One Can Hear You Scream,” is 14.5” x 19,” based on the original size of 18” x 24”, which was drawn on black construction paper using watercolor crayon and colored pencil.

 

MISTAKEN POINT, NEWFOUNDLAND 2012. Looking at Ediacaran fossils on a foggy day made it difficult to see these amazing life forms from so many millions of years ago. Here Tony Martin (with Paleontologist Barbie in his pocket) and Ruth Schowalter (aka RuthTruth, Hallelujah Truth) stop for a photo while international ichnologists clamor overhead to discuss their findings. Ruth writes about her experiences on an ichnology field trip in these blogs: here, here, and here. These blog entries serve as an example of what sort of blogs might come out of the Montana trip.

#REVERB12 (Day 29): What word will you choose to guide you through 2013? MOTHER!

DREAMING MOTHER (art by Hallelujah Truth)

#REVERB12 (Day 29) PROMPT: What word will you choose to guide you through 2013? What do you hope it will bring into your life?

Hallelujah for mile markers, anniversaries, counting the revolutions of the Earth around the Sun, and other various ways of measuring and honoring our time on this glorious planet! 

Hallelujah for acknowledging the emergence of a new year with its promising bundle of hopes, plans, and dreams to be fulfilled in 2013. The guiding word I have selected for my journey this year is MOTHER. 

The cycle of life for we women folk is tri-fold: MAIDEN, MOTHER, and CRONE.  I lingered in maidenhood for more than four decades (marrying at the age of 46), and when I turned 50, without ever having given physical birth, I attempted to jump into being a CRONE....  

REVERB11:AT THE MICRO OR MACRO PERSPECTIVE—NATURE IS STILL NATURE!

MACRO AND MICRO VIEWS OF NATURE, ART BY HALLELUJAH TRUTH

Is NATURE that phenomenon you experience while riding a horse on the beach at sunrise? Is it the feeling of your thighs gripping the saddle of a large warm moving beast, as the wind brushes your face and you look off into the horizon of the endless ocean? The FOUR WALLS of CIVILIZATION have disappeared, and you can smell the rich organics simmering from the nearby marsh and maritime forest. You take a DEEP BREATH and your BODY and BEING fold into the rhythm of the horse’s steps, and you feel you are one with something greater than yourself, which you can only call NATURE.

I call this experience of NATURE, the exalted, romanticized state. It is real, and it is wonderful—NATURE tasted on a large scale of muted horizontal planes of sandy shore, gray blue water, endless expanse of sky. But how often can any of us city-bound folks get to a beach, one that has horse rentals, arise before dawn to go to the stables, and be lead out in a string of horses steady and patient availing themselves to their riders’ AT-ONENESS-WITH-NATURE?

MARCRO-LEVEL NATURE. Muted horizontal planes at Jekyll Island, November 2011. BIG, BREATHTAKING! (photo by Hallelujah Truth)

As bi-peds, we tend to imbibe NATURE at a MACRO-LEVEL, towering above the ground, looking off to horizons, chasing clouds and birds with our mighty glance. How AWESOME is that? Especially when we can “enhance” our presence in NATURE and ability to observe it by straddling a quadruped, a bike, or getting in some contrivance that can help us move rapidly through NATURE and far above it at an observational level? How GRAND and GREAT is MOTHER NATURE?

Then there is the MICRO-LEVEL at which we can relate to NATURE. Going small. Falling to the EARTH, holding it, patting it, putting seeds in it, and watching green LIFE emerge. Oh the critters on small multiple legs that cross our paths before our eyes when we join forces with the EARTH and ask HER to assist us in GROWING something, anything! Or when we kneel on that sandy beach, as if in prayer, to examine and snails moving in shallow tidal pools.

MICRO-LEVEL NATURE. Chiboogamoo stops to examine and photograph snails in a tidal pool on the north end of Jekyll Island, Georgia. Behind him are Pilgrims on horses viewing nature at a macro-level. (Photo by Hallelujah Truth)

SNAIL TRAILS. In the tidal pool is a micro world of pathways and journeys! (Photo by Chiboogamoo)

TRACEMAKING SNAIL. Seeing from the perspective of kneeling on the EARTH opens new worlds and new pilgrims! (Photo by Chiboogamoo)

NATURE to me is the LIFE surrounding us on a MACRO and MICRO level. When we stop to recognize ALL that is THRIVING in the WORLD we live in, we too become NATURE! Hallelujah! 


That is COFFEE WITH HALLELUJAH! SOUL BLOG with me about your relationship with NATURE. And join me to write every day during the last month of 2010! I will be posting a new topic each day. Participate in Hallelujah Truth’s REVERB11.

HALLELUJAH’S PILGRIMAGE: I Belong to this Earth!

Dear PILGRIMS what is a PILGRIMAGE? Hallelujah describes her own PILGRIMAGE as a willing JOURNEY into the unknown with the explicit purpose of learning more about ARTFUL LIVING. Often, there is some disquieting but reasonable apprehension involved, so courage must be employed.

Recently, during my visit to the coast of Victoria, Australia, to join my dear Chiboogamoo, I became entangled and enmeshed with the EARTH, SEA, and SKY in a unique way that caused me to learn more about myself and the enigmatic world surrounding me. I truly was a PILGRIM in alien territory.

(Top photo: Hallelujah peeks out from the vegetation. Left photo: The tower we hiked to on Milanesia Beach. Right photo: Geologists conferring about how to get to Rotten Point!)

Chiboogamoo’s paleontological research brought us to the cliffs hovering above the sea and jutting out into the cloudy coastal sky. Each day we had a destination with wonderful sounding names like Skene’s Creek, Milanesia Beach, Rotten Point, Dinosaur Cove, and Wreck Beach. For news of my husband’s engaging scientific work at these exciting sites along the Victorian coast, visit his blog--The Great Cretaceous Walk.

(Photo right: Greg Denney with my Chibogamoo at Dinosaur Cove. You can see where the geologists drilled for cores behind them.)

Hallelujah sighs! If our work had only been to go to the cliffs along the Great Ocean Road and stare out at the white fluffy clouds lingering in cobalt blue skies above a gray winter ocean, I would not have had the PROFOUND PILGRIM EXPERIENCE, nor the resulting story to tell. Our fieldwork crew had to descend to the rocky shore to search for fossil traces—evidence of living creatures burrowing and moving about on this earth 100 million years ago.

(Photo left: Mike Hall, retired geologist from Monash University. Photo right: Greg and Mike have disappeared into the bush. I am to follow.)

Reaching Rotten Point stands out as the most memorable day of my fieldwork with the “boys.” From our 4-wheel drive vehicle, we walked along an overgrown road sprinkled with white quartz from the Tertiary, a period dating back from about 40 million years ago (This kind of insightful information is offered by my Chiboogamoo—thank you Honey!). The flat sloping road was fairly easy to navigate. Echidnas, creatures that resemble porcupines, had been digging for ants and had left the ground heavily turbated--uneven, which made us concentrate ever so slightly so as not to trip. I learned from Greg Denney, the owner of the property we were traversing and a member of our fieldwork crew, that the delicate red tube shaped flowers dotting the quartz road was heather, the state flower of Victoria. Oh HALLELUJAH! Life is GOOD—echidnas, quartz, Victorian heather, sky, sea, and excellent companionship.

Rather abruptly our 20-minute road walk ended at a wall of thickly grown bushes. We stared at the wildly powerful ocean pounding the rocks about 600 feet below. The force of the water hitting the earth created oodles and oodles of white froth, floating everywhere and seeming to fly across expanses of rolling waves.

Imagine Hallelujah’s surprise when Greg Denney found a way into the bushes. Like magic, the branches and leaves opened up and our guide vanished! Mike Hall, a retired geologist from Monash University followed. Then my dear Chiboogamoo dove in. Tom Rich, the paleontologist from the Museum of Victoria, told me to go next. Gulp…Me? I inhaled and ducked my head, crouching into the darkness created by the arbor of branches. The Australian boys call this “bush bashing.”

(Photo Right: Tom Rich from the Museum of Victoria, Mike Hall, and I pose for a picture by the rock tower that we hiked up to from the beach below at Milanesia Beach.)

As I moved down the vertical face of the cliff, I held onto the branches, asking them not to bite my ungloved hands, not to catch and hold my clothes, not to tear the flesh on my arms and legs. I was thankful when my feet wedged between the hardened wooden bases of the bushes. To my surprise, I discovered we were following a wallaby trail—the fresh scat alerting me to their most recent presence along this very small trail. I was moving through the shrub at wallaby height—about three and half feet high!

At spots without the wallaby trail and the wedging created by their small and well-used trail, I was much less secure. My feet were slipping on the rain soaked soil, and I felt myself falling down the incline, only to have a branch offer itself to me until I found sure footing once again. I held hands with these shrubs, I hugged them, I fell to their feet and became covered with mud on hands and backside. Hallelujah for MOTHER NATURE. Hallelujah!

(Photo left: Mike and Tom look down on Dinosaur Cove. We will walk around to this cove after getting down to Rotten Point first.)

During this descent to the shore, MOTHER EARTH embraced all of me. How intimate to be next to HER and SHE so generous, supportive, and alive! I was enclosed in HER scent, HER soil, and HER vegetation. SHE heaved me down to HER rocky shores with my heart beating strongly. I felt the pounding of HER waves in my bones. I felt PRESENT.

Meanwhile, the geologists conferred. Standing on the gray shale platform extending out into the sea, they decided we could not get to Rotten Point from here. We would have to ascend the 600 feet we had just travelled down and take a different route back to the shore.

Once again we submerged ourselves in the miniature forest of shrubs along the coast. My day proceeded in continued intimacy with the GREAT MOTHER. SHE did not disappoint me once as I walked along HER surfaces, climbed beneath HER branches, slid down HER hillsides, and balanced on the rocks that had eroded from HER cliffs.

(Photo left: Crashing waves showing the energy of this Southern Sea! Photo right: My Chiboogamoo working on exciting fossil traces at Milanesia Beach. Notice Hallelujah's boots on the bottom right half of the photo.)

This PILGRIMAGE stopped time for Hallelujah. The knowledge I gained was EMOTIONAL—VISCERAL: I BELONG TO THIS EARTH. I am part of INFINITE TIME. Where there appeared to be no path, there was one. It was not a human path but a trail made by a much smaller animal living right there. We are part of a HUGE LIVING WEB in the VASTNESS of TIME.

Hallelujah loves all of you. We are all connected, and each one of us is precious. Tell Hallelujah about your BELONGING, your EARTH EXPERIENCES, and what you have learned on your pilgrimage today.