Today is Sunday, April 22nd. It is Earth Day, and our local planet has dressed up in its finest spring duds to make us maritime Washingtonians very happy. Here in the late afternoon, it is 72 degrees, all of the trees are sprouting fresh green growth, and the sun is pouring heat out of a cerulean blue sky.
I spent the afternoon at Bigelow springs, an obscure pocket park on the northeast Olympia hills, overlooking Budd Inlet. Here is a picture of the park, looking west towards the Black Hills. The spring emerges from the ground to the right of the picture, then trickles down in a gentle stream to the left, then is piped (sadly) to East Bay. It is Artesian water, part of the large aquifer that lies under much of Olympia and Tumwater. If you go to the Garfield stream ravine and see the water draining off the steep hillsides, if you drive through seepy drainage pools off of West Bay drive, much of this water is coming from the Artesian aquifer. Or of course, you can go the Artesian well along 4th avenue and drink the water clean from the pipe. All of this is our water.
This is ancient water. Studies done by the Friends of the Well have found it to have a chemical signature that makes it about 2,000 years old. In times past, this water fell on the uplands around the Salish Sea and drained into the aquifer under our feet. This is ancient water.
I went to Bigelow Springs with a group of Faery women. We wanted to honor Earth day, but also the sacred waters and Great Mother Brigid. She oversees not only all water, but also healers & herbalists & midwives (which roughly describes our group). This custom of honoring sacred springs is a very old tradition in Ireland & Scotland. All of us who came today to honor the springs have genetic roots to these homelands. Today we reached back to our ancestors, connecting with our roots, and brought this heritage forward.
This spring was no doubt revered by the Squaxin Indian people whose land this is. But when early Olympia settler Daniel Bigelow took out a homestead claim in 1851, his 160 acres encompassed the springs. While he shared the water with his neighbors, it’s unlikely he welcomed the Squaxin people to come and do regular ceremonies to celebrate the water. We think it has been a long time since anyone did so.
We kicked off our shoes and sat on the ground next to the springs, reveling in the hot sun, and listened to the water gurgle gently past us. I borrowed Joanna’s Peruvian rattle and led a shamanic journey to the Spirit of the Springs, introducing ourselves and asking how we can honor this water. We were told to bring flowers and float them down (Jess found golden dandelions to gift to the water). We were told to gift the springs with silver ( that tradition of putting coins in a fountain comes out of the Celtic world), to give beautiful stones, to leave hazelnuts and cream and Irish whiskey (traditional Faery gifts). We were told to get our bare feet in the water; the Spirit of the Spring especially enjoys the feet of children. .jpg)
We followed an Irish tradition of walking a pattern clockwise three times around the well, earth-stained bare feet on the grass, feeling the Great Mother beneath us, the water tumbling past, a male robin singing us around the circle.
Here under the hot sun, Faery women of all ages: maiden, mother and crone; come and go in the great circular pattern of life. Here Julie played her Irish bodhran, the sound of the drum echoing down the hill. Here Mia passed around water from the downtown Artesian well, helping us cool off from the unaccustomed heat. Here I sang an Irish invocation song, calling in and praising Great Mother Brigid. Here the women walked up and down the springs, leaving gifts, leaving their footprints and taking home a potent sense of their Celtic roots. And along the way, we weave again an age-old and powerful connection to the water that infuses all our lives.
Resources:
• Olympia’s Artesian Well: http://olympiawa.gov/city-utilities/drinking-water/water-quality/Artesian%20Well%20Olympia.aspx
• In Search of Ireland’s Holy Wells by Elizabeth Healy
• photos by Nancy Partlow
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