From Our Forests and National Parks, by John Muir, 1901

“The tendency nowadays to wander in the wilderness is delightful to see. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, overcivilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.

Awakening from the stupefying effects of the vice of over-industry and the deadly apathy of luxury, they are trying the best they can to mix and enrich their own ongoings with those of Nature, and to get rid of rust and disease. Briskly venturing and roaming, some are washing off sins and cobweb cares of the devil’s.

Spinning all-day storms on mountains; sauntering in rosiny pinewoods or in gentian meadows, brushing through chaparral, bending down and parting sweet, flowery sprays; tracing rivers to their sources, getting in touch with the nerves of Mother Earth.

Jumping from rock to rock, feeling the life of them, learning the songs of them, panting in whole-souled involvement, and rejoicing in deep, long-drawn breaths of pure wilderness. So also is the growing interest in the care and preservation of forests and wild places.”

Suiseki is the Japanese art of stone appreciation and may also refer to the objects of the appreciation, the stones. Suiseki may take many forms including those that bear a resemblance to human figures, animal figures, landscape forms, and those which are purely abstract.

Natural stone and rock formations, with no artificial carvings, are preferred. Suiseki are sometimes carved and then thrown back into a lake so that any markings can be washed away with time. The stones can be any color, and contrasting colors are not uncommon.

The size of the stone can be quite varied. They can weigh hundreds of pounds or less than an ounce. Subtlety of color, shape, and markings is also desired, as is beauty of texture and shape. Suiseki are usually reminiscent of someone or something, or may convey a spiritual nature that moves viewers in some way.

One of the most important aspects of suiseki is the great care which is taken in displaying stones. They are usually set upon a stable surface, such as a rosewood pedestal that has been carved specifically for the stone. Suiseki should always be the predominant element and the container or surroundings should never detract from the stone.

Melissa officinalis, also known as Lemon Balm, is a perennial herb in the mint family native to the southern Mediterranean region. The leaves have a gentle lemon scent. At the end of the summer, small white flowers full of nectar appear. These attract bees, hence the genus name Melissa, Greek for ‘honey bee’.

It is used medicinally as a herbal tea or in extract form, and is claimed to have antibacterial and antiviral properties. It is also known as a mild sedative or calming agent. At least one study has found it to be effective at reducing stress.

Lemon balm is often used as a flavoring in ice cream and herbal teas, both hot and iced, often in combination with other herbs such as spearmint. It is also frequently paired with fruit dishes or candies. It can be used in any dish flavored with lemon juice to accent the lemony flavor.

The essential oil is very popular in aromatherapy. It is commonly co-distilled with lemon, citronella, or other oils. Lemon balm is used in some variations of the commerically available Colgate Herbal toothpaste for its soothing and aromatic properties.

Claytonia perfoliata is a fleshy annual plant native to the western mountain and coastal regions of the Pacific United States. The common name “Miner’s Lettuce” refers its use by California gold rush miners who ate it to get their vitamin C to prevent scurvy.

It is very common in the spring, and prefers cool, damp conditions. It first appears in sunlit areas after heavy rains. The best stands are found in shaded areas under trees, especially in the uplands. As the days get hotter in June, the leaves turn a deep red color as they dry out.

It can be eaten as a leaf vegetable. Most commonly it is eaten raw in salads, but it is not quite as delicate as other lettuces. It is often boiled like spinach, which it resembles in taste and texture.

Rumors mention that California original Americans used to place it by red ant hills to pick up formic acid as a “dressing”. Claytonia perfoliata has none of the peppery kick of Nasturtium Tropaeolum majus, also in the Purslane family, which is how this custom may have originated.

Theurgy describes the practice of rituals performed with the intention of invoking the action or presence of one or more gods, especially with the goal of uniting with the divine. Theurgy means ‘divine-working’.

The source of Western theurgy can be found in the philosophy of late Neoplatonists, where the spiritual Universe is regarded as a series of emanations from the One. From the One emanated the Divine Mind and in turn from the Divine Mind emanated the World Soul. Neoplatonists insisted that the One is absolutely transcendent and in the emanations nothing of the higher was lost or transmitted to the lower, which remained unchanged by the lower emanations.

Plotinus urged contemplations for those who wished to perform theurgy, the goal of which was to reunite with The Divine. Therefore, his school resembles a school of meditation or contemplation. Iamblichus of Calcis, a student of Porphyry (who was himself a student of Plotinus) taught a more ritualized method of theurgy that involved invocation and religious, as well as magical, ritual. Iamblichus believed theurgy was an imitation of the gods that endowed embodied souls with the divine responsibility of creating and preserving the cosmos.

Iamblichus’ analysis was that the transcendent cannot be grasped with mental contemplation because the transcendent is supra-rational. Theurgy is a series of rituals and operations aimed at recovering the transcendent essence by retracing the divine ‘signatures’ through the layers of being.

The capability to externally influence the contents of dreams with various stimulus during sleep is an ongoing area of study among dream researchers. Experiments have been made to determine which sense has the most power to evoke memory and emotion, and smell has been found to be the most potent stimulus for evoking memory and the emotions associated with it.

In one study, the participants were allowed to drift into sleep, and as they entered the REM phase (the period most associated with dreaming) the strong odor of either rotten eggs or sweet roses was wafted under their noses. A minute later the subjects were woken and asked about the nature of their dreams and how they felt.

It was found that the sleepers hardly ever dreamed of smelling something. Nevertheless, the emotional tone of the dream did change depending on the stimulation. The unpleasant smell changed the emotional content of the dream to mostly negative, while the scent of roses coloured the dreams with a positive glow.

Other studies have found that using smells during sleep can also have a powerful effect on memory. A group of researchers used the scent of roses on volunteers as they studied, and later as they slept. It improved their performance on a memory test by almost 15 per cent.

The pistachio nut was first cultivated in Western Asia, where it has long been an important crop in cooler parts of Iran. It is a desert plant, and is highly tolerant of saline soil. The fruit has a hard, whitish exterior shell. The seed has a mauvish skin and light green flesh with a distinctive flavor.

The kernels are often eaten whole, either fresh or roasted and salted, and are also used in ice cream and confections such as baklava or biscotti, or cold cuts such as mortadella. Inhabitants of the American Midwest make pistachio salad, which includes fresh pistachios or pistachio pudding, cool whip, canned fruit and sometimes cottage cheese or marshmallows.

In December 2008, Dr. James Painter, a behavioral eating expert described the “Pistachio Principle”. It describes methods of fooling one’s body into eating less. One example used is that the act of de-shelling and eating pistachios one by one slows consumption, allowing one to feel full faster after having eaten less.

The shell of the pistachio is naturally a beige color, but it is sometimes dyed red or green in commercial pistachios. Originally, dye was applied by importers to hide stains on the shells caused when the nuts were picked by hand. Most pistachios are now picked by machine and the shells remain unstained. Like other members of the Anacardiaceae family (which includes poison ivy, sumac, mango, and cashew) pistachios contain urushiol, an irritant that can cause allergic reactions.

In California, almost all female pistachio trees are the cultivar Kerman. Bulk container shipments of pistachio nuts are prone to self-heating and spontaneous combustion because of their high fat and low water content. Pistachio nut production in 2005 was 501 thousand metric tons.

The Black Oystercatcher is a conspicuous black bird found on the shoreline of western North America. It ranges from the Aleutian Islands of Alaska to the coast of the Baja California peninsula. It is a large, noisy bird with a massive long orange or red bill used for smashing or prying open mollusks.

It is restricted in its range, never straying far from shores, in particular favoring rocky shorelines. It has been suggested that this bird is seen mostly on coastal stretches which have some quieter embayments, such as jetty protected areas. It forages in the intertidal zone, feeding on marine invertebrates, particularly mollusks such as mussels, limpets and chitons. It hunts through the intertidal area, searching for food visually, often so close to the water’s edge it has to fly up to avoid crashing surf.

The diet of oystercatchers varies with location. Species occurring inland feed upon earthworms and insect larvae. The diet of coastal oystercatchers is more varied, although dependent upon coast type; on estuaries bivalves, gastropods and polychaet worms are the most important part of the diet, where rocky shore oystercatchers prey upon limpets, mussels, gastropos and chitons. Other prey items include echinoderms, fish, and crabs.

The Black Oystercatcher is a territorial bird during the nesting season, defending a foraging and nesting area in one territory. Some pairs have been recorded staying together for many years. Nests are small bowls or depressions close to the shore in which small pebbles and shell fragments are tossed in with a sideward or backard flick of the bill.