They sound like small dying cows, and they know when you're drawing near, no matter how quiet you are.
But first there was the moose. A large, lumpy brown moose, browsing on the other side of the wetland that sprawls away from a road near where I live. I spotted her during an evening walk, and stepped off the road onto a dirt pullover to watch her for a while.
Then I heard the tired, strained moans, and my other senses became attentive. For a while I convinced myself that perhaps a duck was caught and dying in fishing line, the sound was so hoarse and woeful. I was afraid to look, but couldn't help myself...and I started down a dirt path beside the water to see what I could find.
Frogs. I finally realized they were frogs, and I never did manage to see one (the photo is from another time and place altogether). But they really do sound dreadful, and they led me into a whole world that I might have missed. Because the more I looked and listened in this wetland setting, the more I discovered, until I was swept away with the life that was there. The scent, a sweet fragrance of wild purple phlox in full bloom, and air washed fresh from a June rain; the color, a sky charcoal-yellow with an approaching summer thunderstorm; the sound, the musical chatter of a finch from a tall cottonwood; the movement, an absolute ballet of jumping fish, leaping and twisting and skimming the surface all over the water. With binoculars I spotted an old beaver lodge and a mother duck with her entourage of young. I let myself stalk some frogs, and the next thing I knew, I had an entire National Geographic's worth of nature right under my nose.
I also couldn't help but notice a large new home across the water. A fabulous setting, overlooking this wetland with its moose and peace and wildlife. It had a terraced lawn approaching the water's edge, a hammock strung between two fir trees. A sitting nook with chairs was nestled against a bank below the house; three stories' worth of tall windows reflected beautifully over the marsh; an open second-floor deck awaited company. But the only sign of life I could see there was the flashing picture of a huge flat-screen television inside.
Whose life will we choose to live? The lives we see on TV and the internet, or the life outside that's waiting for us to see it--our own?
Friday, July 3, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
illumination
This aspen leaf made me think about backwards branching. That is, following all the many roads back to their source, rather than to their ends.
The leaf's backlit veins travel delicately to their outermost boundaries, to the edges. Layer by layer, they split off into perhaps infinitely many smaller networks, performing their work with equal purpose. But they all originate from the stronger center vein down the leaf's middle.
Each leaf also has a stem that reaches back to a branch; the leaves are their own network layer. And each branch anchors to the trunk. In the case of an aspen grove, even the trunks are just extensions of a living root system that comprises one complete organism.
And how much further back can the journey of this leaf's life be traced?
There's a time for us to expand outward, to grow and seek and stretch and find new edges to our limits. And there's also a time to follow that same journey inward, to understand the wholeness that cradles all of our pieces, and that illuminates our multitude of antics here on Earth.
The leaf's backlit veins travel delicately to their outermost boundaries, to the edges. Layer by layer, they split off into perhaps infinitely many smaller networks, performing their work with equal purpose. But they all originate from the stronger center vein down the leaf's middle.
Each leaf also has a stem that reaches back to a branch; the leaves are their own network layer. And each branch anchors to the trunk. In the case of an aspen grove, even the trunks are just extensions of a living root system that comprises one complete organism.
And how much further back can the journey of this leaf's life be traced?
There's a time for us to expand outward, to grow and seek and stretch and find new edges to our limits. And there's also a time to follow that same journey inward, to understand the wholeness that cradles all of our pieces, and that illuminates our multitude of antics here on Earth.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
beginnings
I love beginnings.
I don't feel that I've seen very many of them; I always seem to be trying to wrap up something that went before. The past year has been a real wake-up call to letting go.
But on a single spring evening's bike ride, I found beginnings everywhere. I saw the first ospreys back from winter, calling in whistled chirps from their nesting platform. The orange-white-black flash of a rufous-sided towhee on a pine branch surprised me, and the shrill warning call of killdeer greeted me at the Dover wetland. Each first bird sighting is its own little celebration. The air will never feel as fresh through the year as it does now, damp and new. And on the way back, I caught the very first frog-croak of evening.
Spring is easy to love. It brings back reminders of all the little joys and possibilities we'd forgotten about in winter.
I don't feel that I've seen very many of them; I always seem to be trying to wrap up something that went before. The past year has been a real wake-up call to letting go.
But on a single spring evening's bike ride, I found beginnings everywhere. I saw the first ospreys back from winter, calling in whistled chirps from their nesting platform. The orange-white-black flash of a rufous-sided towhee on a pine branch surprised me, and the shrill warning call of killdeer greeted me at the Dover wetland. Each first bird sighting is its own little celebration. The air will never feel as fresh through the year as it does now, damp and new. And on the way back, I caught the very first frog-croak of evening.
Spring is easy to love. It brings back reminders of all the little joys and possibilities we'd forgotten about in winter.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
the forces that shape us
Walking in the park across the street a few weeks ago, I found this ray of light, seeking something to illuminate. I felt fortunate to capture a moment of its play.
As I look around this spring, I see evidence everywhere of how life is shaped by forces both within and outside of its control. Life and death can be opportunistic, random, necessary, or tragic - like the white bones of two deer I found lying by the railroad track, linked vertebrae and a rib cage neat as erector sets, miraculous even in death. Spring bulbs wake readily to bloom--but it was the freezing sleep that prepared them. Robins arriving in February, tired from their long migration, must wait to eat until winter has finished its work. But when the earthworms rise, a spring rain sends them out onto the park path in search of dry land. They cover the walk like strewn pine needles, and I hopscotch my way around them, smiling. But later, I will see that many of them drowned, never making it back to the grass.
There is so much about our lives that seems unpredictable, and oddly, in this time of new life, it occurs to me just how equal and essential a part of life death is. Not just death, but endurance, struggle, patience, and surrender. All of it, all the faces of the circle, are part of one glorious whole. I have railed against the aspects of my life that I don't like for far too long. I can safely say, with what could be called wisdom if it weren't so obvious, that there is no peace in fighting. Our greatest experience of life, I think, is to embrace it completely. It is from here that we can genuinely enjoy the adventure.
As I look around this spring, I see evidence everywhere of how life is shaped by forces both within and outside of its control. Life and death can be opportunistic, random, necessary, or tragic - like the white bones of two deer I found lying by the railroad track, linked vertebrae and a rib cage neat as erector sets, miraculous even in death. Spring bulbs wake readily to bloom--but it was the freezing sleep that prepared them. Robins arriving in February, tired from their long migration, must wait to eat until winter has finished its work. But when the earthworms rise, a spring rain sends them out onto the park path in search of dry land. They cover the walk like strewn pine needles, and I hopscotch my way around them, smiling. But later, I will see that many of them drowned, never making it back to the grass.
There is so much about our lives that seems unpredictable, and oddly, in this time of new life, it occurs to me just how equal and essential a part of life death is. Not just death, but endurance, struggle, patience, and surrender. All of it, all the faces of the circle, are part of one glorious whole. I have railed against the aspects of my life that I don't like for far too long. I can safely say, with what could be called wisdom if it weren't so obvious, that there is no peace in fighting. Our greatest experience of life, I think, is to embrace it completely. It is from here that we can genuinely enjoy the adventure.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Old and new
A new season doesn't arrive without baggage, all shiny and undented. It grows from what went before. Spring is rife with a chaotic array of fresh and stale, broken and supple, bare truth and sweet promise.
The season's first task is to sort out the old and new, a frenzy of creative reorganization. Last year's frayed bird nests lie naked among the branches, secret havens reduced to bones. Shriveled fruits and bent limbs emerge from melting snow, along with the furry tips of new pussywillow buds. Nearby mountains still bear snowy peaks, but robins' evening songs ring clear.
The one thing that cannot be denied is life's progression. Regardless of trials, losses, dead ends, life's nature is to reach ahead again, to push upward – to find a new place to grow.
The season's first task is to sort out the old and new, a frenzy of creative reorganization. Last year's frayed bird nests lie naked among the branches, secret havens reduced to bones. Shriveled fruits and bent limbs emerge from melting snow, along with the furry tips of new pussywillow buds. Nearby mountains still bear snowy peaks, but robins' evening songs ring clear.
The one thing that cannot be denied is life's progression. Regardless of trials, losses, dead ends, life's nature is to reach ahead again, to push upward – to find a new place to grow.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
winter light III
March is a month of drama, as waking spring winds try to chase out the cold winter spirits. Sun, rain, snow, sun, wind, hail, sun, ice...the dance plays out. Part of me loves its fierceness and unpredictability.
March is a cusp time, a time of stirring and resettling. Newly arrived birds flap and chirp, sorting out nesting spots. Crocuses assert themselves through holdout patches of snow. Temperatures rise and fall like the wind, and life wakes up again, yawning and stretching and shrugging out the knots from its long stillness.
But I like to think that this infant season unfurls from a quiet seed of light, planted in the heart of winter. When all is still, turned in on itself, waiting, the light casts its deepest shadow, and the world dreams of its next waking.
March is a cusp time, a time of stirring and resettling. Newly arrived birds flap and chirp, sorting out nesting spots. Crocuses assert themselves through holdout patches of snow. Temperatures rise and fall like the wind, and life wakes up again, yawning and stretching and shrugging out the knots from its long stillness.
But I like to think that this infant season unfurls from a quiet seed of light, planted in the heart of winter. When all is still, turned in on itself, waiting, the light casts its deepest shadow, and the world dreams of its next waking.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
woods path
If there is one thing I've learned this year (although Heaven knows, there have been more than one), it's that each of us truly must walk our own path. And when we do not, something inside us will crackle and grate and claw for our attention until we are willing, or forced, or courageous enough to listen.
It's not that we necessarily know just where we're going. For me, it's more of a feeling, an inner sense of peace and authenticity, and for now I am continuing to search for it. But each path is also its own story, and every story has characters, each one contributing somehow to its development. And on this special day of beginnings, I choose to count my blessings by counting some of the essential characters in my story this year.
First, and at the beginning of everyone's story, are parents. From my father I learned how to be honest and responsible, how to work, how to drive, and how far over the speed limit I could go without getting pulled over. My mother taught me how to be healthy (my lunch always had wheat bread and apples), how to be kind to others, and how to love nature. And my sister is someone I admire for seeming always to have known who she is and what she cares about, and building her life around that.
But in the past couple of years, others have brought meaning to my life in their own ways: Rob, who came into my life to share joy, kindness and adventure, and who also had the task of showing me where my heart still needed to open; Julie, whose bottomless and wise compassion I am forever grateful for; Nick, who believed in me and saw the best in me; Dorothy, whose willingness to help others seemingly knows no bounds; Michelle, who inadvertently got me on a roller coaster for the first time in twenty years; Eric, who reached me again out of the blue and who will always be a friend; Jane, whose love of plants made a greenhouse beautiful and a difficult summer easier; Jerry, who is a good soul from the inside out; Berta, Marina and Geoffrey, the team of healers who are helping to resculpt me through a time of transition into the person I am really here to become; Eileen, whose name means "Light" and who lives up to it; and others who are important and appreciated.
This may sound like an acceptance speech--but in fact, it is. I accept the lessons, the love and the living that all the characters of my life have brought me. And I wish each of them, and all the other adventurers on this storm-tossed Earth, happy, fulfilled lives and awakened hearts.
Namaste
It's not that we necessarily know just where we're going. For me, it's more of a feeling, an inner sense of peace and authenticity, and for now I am continuing to search for it. But each path is also its own story, and every story has characters, each one contributing somehow to its development. And on this special day of beginnings, I choose to count my blessings by counting some of the essential characters in my story this year.
First, and at the beginning of everyone's story, are parents. From my father I learned how to be honest and responsible, how to work, how to drive, and how far over the speed limit I could go without getting pulled over. My mother taught me how to be healthy (my lunch always had wheat bread and apples), how to be kind to others, and how to love nature. And my sister is someone I admire for seeming always to have known who she is and what she cares about, and building her life around that.
But in the past couple of years, others have brought meaning to my life in their own ways: Rob, who came into my life to share joy, kindness and adventure, and who also had the task of showing me where my heart still needed to open; Julie, whose bottomless and wise compassion I am forever grateful for; Nick, who believed in me and saw the best in me; Dorothy, whose willingness to help others seemingly knows no bounds; Michelle, who inadvertently got me on a roller coaster for the first time in twenty years; Eric, who reached me again out of the blue and who will always be a friend; Jane, whose love of plants made a greenhouse beautiful and a difficult summer easier; Jerry, who is a good soul from the inside out; Berta, Marina and Geoffrey, the team of healers who are helping to resculpt me through a time of transition into the person I am really here to become; Eileen, whose name means "Light" and who lives up to it; and others who are important and appreciated.
This may sound like an acceptance speech--but in fact, it is. I accept the lessons, the love and the living that all the characters of my life have brought me. And I wish each of them, and all the other adventurers on this storm-tossed Earth, happy, fulfilled lives and awakened hearts.
Namaste
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