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| The Sacred Door Trail |
| June 24, 2012 |
| By: Kimberly McKeehan |
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Human intuition is an everyday miracle that often yields phenomenal results, but hearing the voice inside can be difficult with the daily distractions of love and work. Luckily, we have a genius listener in our midst. “I believe intuition is the whisper of evolution asking us to come to a higher alignment with ourselves, our community, and the earth,” says Weston Pew. This belief laid the foundation of the Sacred Door Trail—the only interfaith pilgrimage trail in the world—which will be dedicated with a three-day ceremony near the Big Hole Valley next weekend.
Part poet, part explorer, part activist; Weston Pew is a Bozeman native who came full circle via Hollywood and Spain's Camino de Santiago, a centuries-old pilgrimage trail founded by Christians in honor of Jesus' apostle James. “I grew up attending the Episcopal church on Christmas and Easter, but I always longed for the understandings expressed in indigenous traditions. I went to college and then did the acting thing for awhile. When I turned 27 I got this shifting feeling, and I just felt there was a lot more out there to see and discover.”
 Touring Ireland and Scotland, Pew pursued a connection with his ancestors and the land they loved. “I think it gave me perspective on where I came from and where I am going. Indigenous cultures really embody that sense of perspective. With a deep respect for the past, comes deep respect for the future,” Pew says. After spending a solitary month on the Camino, he was convinced that America needed a space for people to rekindle their connection with themselves, their families and ancestors, and the Earth—his own Holy Trinity.
Historically, a pilgrimage is taken to connect the seeker with a faith tradition in a personal way. Pew's intention for the Sacred Door Trail is that pilgrims of any faith will experience a transformation facilitated by nature. “It's the original temple,” Pew asserts, “If you're feeling separated, it's because you haven't opened that sacred door in yourself. Nature will take you through that door, you just have to get yourself out there.”
Pew's pilgrimage unfolded in three stages: “First, it takes about a week to leave behind the day-to-day distractions. Once you get into the rhythm of the experience, a space is created for unresolved feelings to come  up, like grief or anger. It unravels in gentle ways. You get to see your beliefs and decide which truths you want to accept and what illusions you want to let go of. Finally, the shift in your perspective makes room for new insights and the seeds of who you want to become,” Pew proposes.
He continues, “We can heal things through awareness, just by putting our attention on our pain. We don't have to know what it's about. It's the most important thing to do: to heal yourself and become a self-actualized individual so you can understand your connection to the larger community, the Earth, and the universe. You have to go in to get out.”
When he returned from the Camino, Pew was taken under the wing of the American Indian Institute and its executive cirector, Eric Noyes. “Eric really helped me to establish a clear vision and also guided me through the website development and fundraising,” Pew reports. Pew consulted with elders from several tribal nations and Walkin' Jim Stoltz to find a series of interconnected trails that would become The Sacred Door Trail, which intersects with the Nez Perce National Historic Trail and the Continental Divide Trail.
It will take an average hiker twenty days to complete the 165-mile loop around the Big Hole Valley. There are day hikes to enjoy along the way, and halfway through the route the town of Jackson provides a hot springs, upscale accommodations and stores where one can replenish supplies. Pew walked the trail three times in order to write a guidebook that will help pilgrims find water and camping along the way.
But Pew wants his intentions to remain clear. “No one is making money from this project,” he reports. All proceeds from the book will be used to produce more books and perhaps help to fund annual gatherings at the trail.
The Sacred Door Trail has lived in Weston Pew's imagination for the past four years. Next weekend he will give it to the world community in a ceremony attended by people from faith traditions across the globe. Notably, Peruvian healers Luz Maria Ampeuro and Fred Clarke will share an experience of sound healing. The opening ceremony will echo Pew's experience on the trail, with three days successively carrying the themes of past, present and future. Formal blessings from spiritual leaders will mix with impromptu ceremonies involving all in attendance. “I see this trail as a way for our great-great grandchildren to connect with us,” Pew says, “My hope is that when people walk, the seeds are planted for connecting their daily lives with the earth and with their communities.”
Sacred Days
As time speeds up we must slow down
to stay open to the eternal lessons that abound
the minute you run with eyes to the ground
the sacred door is closed to the universal sounds
that breathe spirit into the work that for this moment you've found
If you can maintain connection through the minutes of your way
your life will be a collection of sacred days
--Weston Pew |
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| By: Beth Barnes |
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In the middle of the remote North Pacific Ocean, a dead zone to sailors and a rarely traveled route by ships, there is a toxic soup of plastics circulating and growing by the day. The estimate is 100 million tons of plastic debris that continuously circulates within the currents of this naturally occurring gyre. However, there is nothing natural about the plastics. The North Pacific Gyre, aka: the Garbage Patch, currently measures almost twice the size of the United States and all indications point to a no-end-in-sight scenario. It has become a catch basin for all the trash that travels from as far away as Japan and the west coast of North America.
Captain Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Resarch Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Long Beach California, found the gyre by accident when he was returning to the Mainland from Hawaii after completing the 1997 Transpac sailboat race. The discovery of so much plastic, so far from home aroused his curiosity and he began a one-man crusade to learn the origins of the endless debris and to find solutions to the problem. Since 1999, Captain Moore has gained worldwide notoriety as an outspoken advocate in the war against plastics and the movement has gained continuous momentum within growing ranks. Captain Moore has become an authority on the subject of plastic marine debris and his findings have set benchmarks within the scientific and manufacturing communities worldwide.
Every year over one million seabirds and one hundred thousand marine mammals die from the ingestion or  entanglement in plastic debris. Captain Moore says, “This is not a problem specific to coastal populations it is a problem for everyone because we all live on a watershed of some description.” He went on to say, “Most of us eat fish from the oceans, so it’s our responsibility to be vigilant stewards.” Captain Moore stresses that what we, as thinking human beings, do on land has a direct effect on what happens within our watersheds, particularly those leading to our oceans. Whatever we discard on land will find it’s way into storm drains that will lead to streams, rivers and eventually oceans, and this debris will be the demise of the wildlife that count on these habitats to be hospitable.
Laysan Albatross chick carcass: Midway Atoll, the best known of the
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and home to the largest population of Laysan Albatross. |
On the remote Pacific Midway Atoll, thousands of miles from the Mainland, scientists and park rangers have found that one hundred percent of the Laysan Albatross Chick carcasses contain plastic debris. The mothers charged with feeding their chicks are returning with pieces of plastic that have been mistaken for nutritious food, so instead of sustenance the chicks are getting little more than plastic. They die of starvation and malnutrition; sometimes dying because they cannot pass the non-digestible plastic through their fragile systems. Sea Turtles also mistake discarded plastic bags and other plastic waste as food only to choke when the plastic lodges in their throats or small intestines.
In 1999, Captain Moore discovered that in the gyre, pieces of plastic outweighed surface zooplankton  by a factor of 6 to 1! The plastic not only poses a threat to marine life, it poses a threat to human life. Plastic does not biodegrade so it is always present in the food chain at every level. Plastic photodegrades by breaking into ever smaller pieces with exposure to the sun’s UV light, and at every stage there is a new and smaller fish or organism who readily mistakes the plastic as food. Unfortunately, this plastic debris has already been releasing chemical additives and plasticizers into the oceans while absorbing hydrophobic pollutants like PCBs and pesticides like DDT. These toxic pollutants bioaccumulate in the tissues of the marine organisms that mistake the plastic as food and eventually the toxic pollutants find their way onto our tables.
Beach Debris approximately 2,000 miles from the mainland: Kure
Atoll is the most remote of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and the northern-most coral atoll in the world.
 Of the approximate 100 million tons of plastic debris in the world’s oceans, almost eighty percent comes from the land via our watersheds. The remaining twenty percent comes from ocean sources such as derelict fishing gear and waste from the shipping industry. Much of what ends up in the ocean is single use disposable consumer items such as bottle caps, plastic bottles, straws, plastic cutlery and single use plastic bags, but the list goes on. Another major plastic scourge is the ‘nurdle’, a chemically produced, pre-production plastic pellet. These multi colored pellets, about the size of a lentil, are melted then extruded to produce plastics of every description. These “nurdles” freely fall from railcars and tanker trucks and also escape from extrusion plants by the millions. Due to their size, they are nearly impossible to catch so they find their way into the watershed and are a favorite of birds and marine mammals who mistake them as fish eggs.
We have become dependent upon plastics and we must now curb our dependency by reconditioning ourselves and our buying habits. While Captain Moore and his scientific team continue their work on the Oceanographic Research Vessel Alguita, there are
| Captain Moore conducts research in the Garbage Patch aboard the custom built Oceanographic Research Vessel Alguita, based in Long Beach, CA |
things we can do to help curb and eliminate our appetite for plastics. Following is a list of suggestions that will help fight the plastic plague.
It’s everyone’s problem so please start today!
TEN THINGS YOU CAN DO TO CONSERVE YOUR WATERSHED
1. HOUSEHOLD CHALLENGE: create a 100% recyclable and compostable grocery list. Imagine all of your household waste going into the compost pile or recycle bin!
2. If you must buy consumable products, choose paper, glass or bio-plastic.
3. Sweep sidewalks, don’t hose them.
4. Use natural pest killers in your garden, such as ladybugs, decollate snails, or praying mantis eggs. Use pesticides sparingly.
5. Dispose of used oil, antifreeze, paints, and other household chemicals at a hazardous waste facility, not in storm drains.
6. Keep vehicles well maintained. Clean up spilled brake fluid, oil, grease, and antifreeze with a rag or absorbent compound.
7. Wash your car on the lawn so that the water sinks into the ground. Use environmentally friendly cleaners.
8.. Purchase household detergents and cleaners that are low in phosphorous to reduce the amount of nutrients discharged into our lakes, streams and coastal waters.
9. Ask your community to install screens over storm drains, and help keep them free of litter, leaves, and debris.
10. Buy in bulk, and bring your own cloth or recycled grocery bags to the store.
For further information on Algalita Marine Research Foundation and Captain Moore, or for educational materials, click here .
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In a related story: Search for Air France Flight 447 Hindered By Garbage
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| Save The Arctic |
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The Gwich'in Nation (Caribou People) are raising their voices to help save the Arctic and stop global climate change. They are considered to be the last subsistence living Indians in North America and are trying to protect the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge from drilling because it is the calving ground of their sacred herd of 200,000 caribou. They can feel the effects of climate change already. Why should we drill for more fossil fuel??!!!
Here, in the above photo, many of the residents of Arctic Village (along with a few visitors) 130 people in all, laid down upon the tundra and became a caribou. The image of their message was being projected on the wall at the global climate change talks in Bonn, Germany in early June as part of the Human Voices Now and the tcktcktck campaigns leading up to the climate change talks in Copenhagen in December. It was facilitated and photographed by an artist group called Spectral Q . |
This was sent to me by my friend Mavis Muller , who was the hoof of the front leg!!
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S.O.S. From Alaska
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| On September 6, 2009 over 100 fishing boats, kayaks, skiffs and sail boats took part in a creative statement by aerial artist, John Quigley . In the past 200 years the oceans have absorbed about one fourth of the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by human activities like fossil fuel burning. As CO2 mixes into seawater, it forms carbonic acid. Since the Industrial Revolution, fossil fuel emissions have increased the acidity of the surface oceans—the upper few hundred meters where nearly all fish and marine mammals live— by an average of 30% worldwide. If emissions continue to increase on current trends, the oceans will become more acidic than at any time in the past 20 million years. For more pictures of beautiful aerial art statements visit manoman.com. |
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