I was riding through southern Alberta today with a couple of friends when I saw my first tumbleweeds!! I was like a kid that had just seen snow for the first time. So awesome to see them blowing about in the wind knowing what I know about how adaptable they are. For instance, do you know that these plants pull up their roots and put down their roots at will? So when they need better conditions for survival, they simply uproot and let the winds blow them about until they find sustenance. This has been a good metaphor for me today. The winds of change have been blowing all the old cobwebs out of my life in time for Halloween and I’ve been riding them out with fewer bumps than I would have before and yet it is still a rocky ride. I pray that one day, I will learn to have the grace of the tumbleweed during transitions:
“Touching the world of the tumbleweeds has allowed me to feel what it’s like to naturally embody change. These wild nomads of the desert readily transform and playfully tumble around in their dance with life and death, all according to their unique, ingenious design. Tumbleweeds know about rooting themselves only when and where it’s nourishing. And they intentionally move on from what-has-been when the cycle is complete, when that purpose has been served, honouring it all with their ease, lightness, and quirky grace. Tumbleweeds have shown me how to call in the winds to let old attachments go.
I’ve come to see this aged gathering of browned tumbleweeds as a council of elders who hold and seed sacred ground for the generations to come. The tumbleweeds know it’s never too late to remember what’s been forgotten. If we’ve come here to tumble, to love or heal or dream, to build or sing or create, we can start any time, any day.
In the harvesting of the tumbleweeds and their teachings, I’ve grown aware of the understanding we share. That I’m home and it’s time for me to dig in my roots and tenaciously hold my center, to reach out and give and receive in the sharing with a spidery open-armed embrace. And it’s time for the tumbleweeds to move on, to uproot and get untangled so they can follow their spirits callings and flow with the freedom of their quests.
The prickly brown tumbleweeds easily pull away from the sandy soil and I walk with them towards the open mesas, huge billowy armfuls of sundried plants held over my head. I place them on the ground on the other side of the fence so they’re lying now on the wilderness lands- free to dance with the elements and join up with the winds and continue on their way.”
-excerpt from TUMBLEWEEDS by JoAnne Dodgson
Living from the Inside, Out 