Raging Fire and Cool Forests
Navigating vitality like a fern
The 2018 lava flows in the Puna District on the Big Island of Hawaii changed the landscape, permanently altering the terrain and slicing through whole neighborhoods. Roadways that once connected communities were bisected by molten rock.
As I slow-traveled through this place at the beginning of the year, I’d lean out the passenger-side window of the rental car and video the lava fields. It would shock my eyes, the demarcation of the now-cool rock as it formed black deserts along the coast. Where fire met water, the decimated pathways formed clearcut fields, nature’s pavement, surrounded by lush jungle.
Along the boundaries of the forest and lava, within the cracks that sank deeply within the dried flows, there was one plant that stood out because it was fully intent on making a comeback.
The fern.
Ferns are extent species that exist in evolutionary stasis, meaning they have remained unchanged, even at the level of nuclei and chromosome, for at least 180 million years. Fossils of the oldest known preserved ferns, dating back to the Mesozoic era, show that the compound and structure of those ferns are precisely exact to the modern fern growing in your backyard.
-pohala.net
A Present Artifact of our Ancient Past
Ae, or Pellucid Polypody is the mastermind of regeneration. This fern is the first sign of life returning to cooled lava and can survive rooted into the ground while also adapting in the jungle to be an air plant with a very different appearance and a longer root structure.
All evidence points to ferns, in general, being the organic matter that floated to the bottom of mega-swamps 300 million years ago to form the substance that we now call fossil fuels.
I spend most of my days thinking that the horse has watched on as humans followed their drives to the time we exist in now — but horses were late watchers in this act compared to the ever-present fern.
I didn’t notice ferns around the farm until a student’s grandmother, an accomplished visual artist, asked if she could dig some plants up from the ground around the mobile home that serves as a restroom and holding place for all the odds and ends that we might need someday but seldom if ever, touch. The building is a distance from the main traffic areas of the farm and is the last place to be mowed when summer snakes its growth into every forgotten crevice.
With the ferns, I did that thing where we don’t notice something until someone else points out the value in it — I saw the ferns that populated the cool shade beneath the back porch of the bathroom building because the grandmother saw them first.
On closer inspection, I realized the ferns appealed to my need for balance and order. And the coiled, fractal spiral of the fiddlehead delighted me with its compact implication of motion, a waiting surprise of maturity, like when someone who rode with me as a kid returns to visit when they’ve grown.
As if youth is a coiled possibility waiting to spring, and suddenly — there’s a full frond doing complex fern things.
In June’s subscriber Zoom, Michelle Higdon talked about the moment she realized that she was a part of a community, our community. Michelle is also in my apprentice program and an instructor at my farm and we see each other almost every day. I know her story. I know her struggles and triumphs.
But when Michelle detailed the things that caused her to feel accepted by our little community, she spoke of how people showed up for her in hard times, how they were there for her when things weren’t going according to plan, when she was experiencing the worst outcomes.
This got me thinking.
In one moment I praised her for noticing that we always had her back, but I followed that up with the wish that she didn’t have to go through the hard stuff to discover our support. I wanted there to be an easier way.
I come from a long line of people who are brilliant in crisis but are confounded by how to be present with a person when they’re doing okay. I’m programmed to be creeped out when the sea is calm, continually bracing against the next, potential big wave when there isn’t a cloud in the sky.
Maybe I’ve looked at the fern thing wrong, praising their resilience and ability to grow in the harshest environments. These plants are the first to appear in the lava cracks after the scorched ground cools, but what if this trait that I comprehend as toughness is simply the ability to calmly weather the easy times as much as the harsh?
What if the secret of surviving hardship is to focus on being fully present when things are okay?
And what does present even mean?
Trial by fire, dark night of the soul, crisis management — we have so many phrases to describe the reality of hard transitions and to contingently practice scenarios that haven’t yet occurred. We tally our losses like they’re a balance sheet that scores our personal relevance. And not just for our individual lives. We created the phrase compassion fatigue to describe the state of caring too much as we show up for other people’s problems, burying our own, and seemingly not making a nudge on the scale of world suffering.
We are expert problem solvers, to the extent that whole industries have been created to show us how to self-care, how to stay busy with tasks that add value during downtime. We’ve forgotten how to occupy ourselves and how to be present with other humans when pressure isn’t compressing us into fossil fuel at the bottom of the swamp.
We even want our recreation to produce adrenaline.
Isn’t this weird?
What if most of our lasting growth happens in the time we spend between troubles? And how do we learn to live between the fires, when the ground is cooling, when we don’t have a crisis that is asking us to responsibly show up?
What can I learn from the ferns?
🌿 I can see the traces of the Fibernaci Sequence inside myself, reminding me that I’m born with the answers spiraled into my code. I can sense this wisdom when I get out of my own way. For me, these knowings arrive in water-like clarity, in the stillness that descends after strong action. And then I forget it for a while. And then I remember again. So on and so forth, etc.
🌿 In Hawaii alone each of the 103 endemic ferns are traditionally correlated to individual human emotions. I’m going to seek out the ferns near my home in South Carolina and discover their names. I will study these ferns and ask them what attributes they would like me to see. What do they have to show me? I didn’t set out to write about ferns this week, but here I am, and the ferns are already working their wisdom.
🌿 If emotions are energies that direct life, an invisible and ever-present fuel source — I want to be aware of how my resources are being tapped. A connection to the emotional components attributed to individual ferns is a symbolic reminder of the nuanced charge of my emotions. Is my energy renewable? How can I recharge?
🌿 We have identified over 15,000 types of ferns in the world. Ferns are in a small company of others in the plant kingdom (alongside mosses, liverworts, and algae) because they reproduce by spores and not seeds. These independent babies don’t need a container for food and incubation. Reproduction happens independently of the parent. I will tap into spore-wisdom to see what attachments are holding me back from my strength.
🌿 Long ago, ferns were planted to dispel negative energy, and ferns were hung inside homes to protect the space from lightning strikes. This ancient plant, the oldest on earth, shows up in our earliest known stories. As a continuous companion to our world, while freely and abundantly living in places uninhabited by humans, the fern teaches me adaptability and resilience — metamorphosis occurring in the simplest ways. I like to overcomplicate EVERYTHING. It’s incredibly freeing to consider my strength and wisdom accruing in soft times, the in-between times, the times when I’m most receptive to learning because there is space to expand within. I listen better when I’m not stressed.
It’s easy to take ferns for granted. They’re an embodiment of our emotional dreamscape, often lost between periods of high action. Ferns are ever present and thriving in the shadows. They’re in our backyards and hanging in baskets on our porches. They don’t need much from us, but they have so much to give.
Tell me about your relationship with ferns. I challenge you to look around and see how incredibly present these plants are in our lives, in every corner of the world.
Tell me your fern stories.
Love,
Kim
You might have missed the navigation guide and table of contents on the Stable Roots home page. I added a little welcome video this week, and here it is for all of you that have been a part of this venture from the very beginning. I cannot thank you enough for your support. Your subscription, whether free or paid, allows me to make writing a priority in my life. And seeing as how having time to write was the whole reason I created Bramblewood Stables (I went about this backward, I know) — reading and supporting my work is a way of supporting the whole ecosystem of a little farm in Taylors, SC. Thank you.
I’m opening up June’s online Journaling Workshop to all my paid subscribers. If you can’t make it on Sunday, June 30th, I’ll be sending out the recording. Join now to receive access to exclusive events, all my posts, and lots of other extras.
I spent many, many hours wandering the Clemson experimental forest as an undergraduate who had to take way too many plant biology classes. I’ve seen a lot of ferns and studied their life cycle extensively, but today I got a fresh perspective on this vital little plant. Thank you 💚