Piece of Heaven

Playing Agricola tonight with my husband and two good friends, the chickens safe in their coop, the babe squirming in my belly, and my boy snuggled cozy in our bed. With the cold just settling in for the season, I cannot ask for more than this.

Making Sense

The crisp leaves on the trees, singing the song of the night wind. The stars in the sky, holding their same places since our long-forgotten ancestors looked up at them. The women in Haiti, trading sex for food to feed their children. My little boy, warm and snug in his bed, calling to me so he can wrap his arms around my neck.

Sometimes I have trouble fitting all the pieces together, finding the sense in this world of ours.

"Ernie"

Our lovely little black-and-white rooster left the yard today in the mouth of our neighbor's dog.

"Ernie," as we called him, was a Silver-Spangled Hamburg, and he and the three hens of his breed have spent their lives doing their best to maintain a minimum of 15 feet between themselves and humans. Yesterday, I had a few minutes to myself, and went out to sit on the grass. I was soon joined by the usual quiet, friendly Buff Orpingtons and the occasional Ameraucana, but was quite surprised to find Ernie approaching quite closely. I wondered whether he'd become more territorial and was coming to send me away, but he only had interest in the hens. He spent five or ten minutes strutting silently around me, keenly interested in the eggs I'd rested in the grass after collecting from the coop. He tried to mount a couple of the hens, but he has had a limp for a few days, which has made mating quite out of reach for him.

As he moved around me, closer than he's been since he was a tiny chick, I got a chance to see his plumage up close. He was just beautiful. White feathers that sprayed out in a mane along his neck, then draped down along his back and chest to delicate little points. The feathers on his rump were the same, only with a black tip where they draped down, moving like water. His primary tail feathers were just like the hens', with their proud, nearly vertical holding, but the rooster also carried several trailing, pointed feathers that looped up beside his tail and then dropped back down toward the ground, subtle green in the tips, just a sheen.

I was also able to see yesterday, being so close, just how much of his visiual field was lost due to his "rose comb." This is quite an old breed, so I imagine they must be able to survive fairly well, but I felt that it was unjust for him to have such a disadvantage in life. His comb protruded out into a large mass that sat above his beak, blocking essentially all of his frontal vision. It makes me sad to think of him scrambling tonight with the other birds to get away from the dog, only to be slowed by his bum leg and his vision blocked by his comb.

I'm very grateful to have had that time with him yesterday, the gift of being close to him in a peaceful way, of viewing him up close, taking in all of his beauty, his personality, before the dog carried him away today. Grateful that he gave me that, that he allowed that. I found quite a few of his feathers in the yard after everyone departed (two neighbors saw the dog chasing the chickens and ran over to try to stop him), which is how I determined that he was the one who had been taken. I kept the ones that did not have his blood on the quills. They are all beautiful.

I set out a tea candle in our fire pit tonight for him, rested it on a little nest of the remainder of his feathers in the center of the pit. I have not had a fire in the firepit since my husband dug it out for me, and I was warmed and pleased to see how the light illuminated the inner surfaces of the rocks that line it. It was a tiny light in the night, but enough to give me company, to honor and bless the bird.

The moon is bright and sharp tonight.

Pictures

Here are some images from our gathering.

Coal burning to make a bowl from a log (just starting).

Folks' clay pieces being fired in our fire.

Some of the baskets people have made in the past.



A basket just beginning (I brought materials home but have not started mine yet).

Working on the basket, learning all the little steps along the way.

Community

Gathering this weekend with other folks passionate about learning to live off the land. This morning I was successful at starting fire by friction for the first time, using the hand drill method. Also began a braided corn husk basket, carved a bow drill set for making fire at home, watched a roadkilled raccoon get skinned and butchered, and traded my homegrown garlic and jalapenos for a handworked chert knife blade at the end of the day. Will post some pictures soon.

Uneven Ground

Spent a lovely afternoon with my mother and boy (and baby) in a port city yesterday, eating good food, walking through inspiringly beautiful gardens, and throwing rocks and crabapples into the water from the piers. Today, went on a train ride with my father and the boy (and baby) in another city, then, again, walked for hours beside the water, throwing rocks into the waves, testing tart apples on trees that still grow beside the water, and then spending a half hour closing the circle on a horseshoe-shaped miniature stone wall we came upon beside the water, all three of us lazily adding ocean-smooth rocks as we sat, walked, talked there.

Midwife came for our monthly home visit this week, spoke of a client with an 8-month-old and another young child. The woman has just found out that she has leukemia, and is now hooked up to chemotherapy much of the time. She has been in my thoughts since my midwife mentioned her, the seeming injustice of our uneven situations. She with question as to whether her body will pull through this illness, while I spend such magical times with my parents and my child, days full of beauty, perfect companionship, delight, the lightness of trusting that my life can continue on for decades.

Leaf

Here's the gift for my husband, along with the rinsed-out "screen" for it. Our boy decided to make a gift for him, too - the little yellow paintings, entitled "I yike my dada."

Diversion

Taking my sitting time to work on a gift for my husband. I found these leaf silhouettes, and I've chosen one and am making a homemade screen-printing-style image on a shirt for him. (I don't mean this as a product endorsement - indeed, I'm not even using the product listed - this is simply where I found the directions to make this project.)

River

I was in a wretched space yesterday with my husband, which is my pattern whenever I restart my work to live in a state of awareness, presence. It's as though the sleeping part of me puts up the nastiest fight it can conjure in an effort to keep me wrapped up in my thoughts rather than awake to what's happening around me.

Husband and son let me sleep in this morning, and I woke to find my husband cleaning up after completing a fair-sized house project I'd asked for his help on. I had been lying in bed for a few minutes upon waking, watching my brain list off all the things in my life I was irritated about, but the scene I came upon, of the finished project and happy family, nipped the pattern in the bud, for today at least.

As tense as yesterday was, today outdid it with beauty by far. Spent our hours together, working on little pet projects, napping, playing in the warm yard, eating great food we'd prepared during the week. In the afternoon, shortly before dinner, we took the boy tricylcing on a path down the street from our house that runs beside old railroad tracks. On a whim, we jutted off into the woods on a path I'd followed with the dog a few years back, and came upon the same pretty little peninsula covered with tall pines that I'd found then. Only today, it was exquisite. It overlooks a river, slow and easy and silent but for birdsong and chipmunk chatter.

The afternoon sun glittered on the river that we had all to ourselves and streamed in ribbons of light through the temple of pines, the light and shadow playing throughout, making the forest and river look like a painting of one of the Old Masters - only a millionfold lovelier, because it was real, it was life.

My husband and the boy went to investigate a little shallow sandy area, and I walked along the banks of the river, admiring the bare ledges under the water that had been washed clean over the eons by the river's slow current. At one point, peering into a washed-out cavern under the roots of a great pine, I found myself face to face with a garter snake sunning itself on the rock the roots grew on.

As I walked back over to join my family after exploring, my husband was pointing out the minnows to our boy, then said "Oh, look! Look at this!", reaching into the clear water and lifting up a baby turtle that was swimming by. The scene was already so wondrous, and then this little creature, this ancient new creature, appeared to punctuate how precious this day was.

I found myself several times imagining some unfortunate event occurring, realizing at the same time that it was simply because the scene, the time we spent there, were full of so much pleasure, such utter beauty in nature, that it was hard for me to simply accept it and treasure it. It felt as if we had come upon Eden itself, and I knew that there were places all over the earth that people come upon similarly, exquisite places on the earth still growing as the earth originally fashioned them, the forests still standing, the waters still clean.

Sweet Day

Went out tonight, rested and calm after an idyllic day spent with my family. Peaceful, connected sit tonight, but a lot of self-distraction against writing about it now. Not sure why.

Tuned in to my sense of the web I have written of before. This tool has been coming to mind frequently of late, helping me to return again and again to the balance I wish to cultivate in my life. I believe that sitting and reflecting on my sits regularly has helped the web exercise to resurface as a part of my daily life, and also, I believe, the fact that I am again listening to Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now daily, which is such a powerful support in remaining present and grounded.

Tonight, sensing the web brought me immediately into awareness of my own visibility in the dark yard; the daylily and milkweed garden beside the back porch suddenly transformed into a potential hiding spot that I could crouch behind for cover.

Walked, slowly and silently, out towards the apple tree, sat down under it. Listened to the crickets, felt the cool air hugging me. Reflected on the day, full of so many pleasures: sleeping in, knowing my boy and husband were getting time together, only cooking one meal today, napping on the bed in the afternoon, dinner with my husband's family, and our sweet bedtime, the boy finally getting his wish to have his father snuggle with us when we go in to bed. In fact, my husband did the entire bedtime routine with him tonight as well, for the first time in their lives (I could also say the boy accepted my husband's participation in it for the first time), and I only joined them on the way to bed. The boy lay so happily snuggled between us, his face glowing with a silent smile, the picture of perfect contentment, a happy little being. He turned to me and wrapped his little arm around my neck, but turned back toward his father over and over again, as if to check that he was still there. Then his eyes slowly closed, and he drifted quietly off to sleep more quickly than I can remember him doing in months.

Now my husband is playing an Uwe Rosenberg game with a new friend, a fellow who brings the same gifts to friendship as my husband does.

A lovely day, full of leisure, restedness, enough time to myself, and surrounded by family. It is a great effort for me to recall the details about which I want to write now. I have yet to discover the source of my distraction, but at this point am content to be lulled by the pleasures of the day, the quiet music playing, and allow myself to drift off to sleep as contentedly as my little man.

Senses

Sat on the porch tonight, the moon shining down on much of the yard. A lot of inner resistance to sitting tonight, probably arising from my longstanding resistance to completing projects. Went through the sense meditation. Focused in on my hearing first - crickets, cars, planes, voices from inside the house, my breathing. Then sight - the view of the yard in the moonlight, the darker areas and lighter areas, the shapes and depth. Then feeling - scanning my body from head to toe, the cool on my face, the itches on my neck, the fullness of my belly, my hands wrapped tightly in the pockets of my fleece, escaping the mosquitoes. Smell - a faint sewage smell, drifting on the light breeze from the north. And taste - heavy leftover dinner flavor, the lighter taste of the breeze over my tongue.

Again tonight, as at the beginning of this year's 30-day sit spot challenge, I was overwhelmed by all of the sensations to be experienced through this exercise. I felt I was floating in a vast universe of sensations, unable to sense them all at the same time. I know from past experience that this ability will come in time; glad to have the perspective of my other experiences.

I would like to continue sitting and writing regularly. I am looking for an anchor, like this completed commitment, to hold me to this routine, which is so grounding and enriching for my life.

Postponement

Exhausted already and heading into our weekly game night. Will sit and write tomorrow. May extend my commitment because of this hiatus.

Changing Paths

Sat in the tree tonight. Got a sappy kiss on my hand on the way up, which I inadvertently brushed against my mouth when I got an itch, so now my lips are sticky with the tree's juice.

There in the pine at night, I felt like a child in a boat for the first time, all the sights and sounds I've been missing since my regular sits, so much to see and sense and feel. The immensity of its body, like a massive building of branches and needles and air, of space and life. The view through its branches, the silent movement of them moving in the night breezes. The presence of the neighboring trees, the buzzing and chirring of the August insects.

Climbed down and walked a roundabout route back to the house. Passed by a newly empty spot in the yard where a rock - once our ceremonial rock, and then our sitting and visiting rock - disappeared from a couple of days ago. It surely left by the hands of one family member or another, who most likely wanted it for a retaining wall or the like. I was suprised to see it gone, but only after witnessing my husband's upset at the inherent dismissal of our opinions did it occur to me to be upset by it, as well.

While chewing on the circumstances of its disappearance tonight, I found myself walking very quickly back toward the house, an email in mind, and recognized the state I get into when I am not looking at the whole picture. Upon seeing my mindstate, I looked toward my sit tree and felt a strong pull to walk back to it. I slowed my walk and returned to it, passing again the now flat earth where we have sat on the rock and played so many times, where my mother sat just last weekend as she held the boy on her lap, sharing her paints with him. I reached up on an urging and touched the tree, and a sense of love and peace, of absolute forgiveness washed over me. The tree was reminding me to lead with my heart, not with my head and my ideas, and my heart was saying to be infinitely gentle, to always be gentle when it is possible. I walked back to the house, taking care to walk slowly as a means of keeping myself present. I watched myself alternate between moments of anger and moments of peace, as I worked to honor the tree's guidance.

Up on the porch, still holding only a tenuous grasp on the choice to deal with this situation with my heart, I knelt down to ask for more support. I remembered, out of the blue, the trip I took into town today to dispose of and also give away a large amount of stuff that has been taking up space in our house. I remembered the sense of freedom, spaciousness, joy that filled me to know I had let go of things I no longer needed and sent them out joyfully into the world.

We did not, of course, wish to be free of our rock, but this memory showed me that I can choose to experience its disappearance in the same mindset. Our instinct to keep things, to hold tightly to objects in our lives, does not serve us as well as releasing them freely into the world does. I can grumble over the trespass, the dismissal of our opinion, the absence of what we both consider to be an old friend. I can also open my heart, listen to my heart, and hear what it is saying: that we do not need that rock, any more than we need any individual objects in our lives. We need each other, and our health, food, love. The necessary things to survive. But objects outside of this description can come and go and we can choose to receive them and let them go with open hands.

I believe it prudent that we bring up the issue with our family anyway, to ensure that we do not wake to discover other cherished objects missing from our yard. But I now have the tools to do so in a measured, peaceful way, rather than with resentment or anger under my words.

Workings (Momentum)

Went out in irritation tonight, a disagreeable evening with my husband borne of his afternoon spent dealing with the hurtful caretaker of one of his charges. Her energy lingered in his memory, souring our time together.

On my way out, I again dismissed my habitual crutch of limiting my time outside with a timer. Walked down into the yard, found myself setting my sights on the dirt road behind our house that links our family's homestead together. I usually don't stray far into the back yard these days, and I don't know that I've ever left our yard during a sit, but tonight there was no question. I needed to walk. Strode briskly up the driveway, across yards in the dark beside the trees, and back down. Walked straight down to the main road, which we never walk on for concern of bodily injury, as car fly by at 60 miles per hour. But it was night, no cars approaching down the long straightaway, so I crossed the road. I realized through the course of this walk that I have been living within confines, keeping routine paths that only strayed within the tight bounds of my daily visits: to the coop, the garden, the sandbox, and paths to the houses. Tonight there were no such walls, and I seemed to be exploring the land around our house anew. Instead of our house, instead of the glowing bay window showing my husband at his painting inside, being the anchor for my time outside, the place I am simply waiting to return to, tonight I was freed entirely to go wherever I would go, no sense of inhibition from property lines, from my usual sense of road safety, from the tug to return indoors to my habits, habits, blind habits.

On the other side of the darkened street, I greeted a young larch that stands there, and which I have often appreciated and admired. I walked up the street, looking at houses I normally only see from the car at some speed. I felt the potential for neighborhood, despite the barrier of the roadway on which we live.

I discovered a grand, tall tree not four houses down from mine, towering over a little side street. Leaves thick and leathery in the dark, it rustled like its own forest in the breeze. I greeted it.

Turned back to home, passed by our house at the call to continue moving, and walked up and around the yards again. Paused in the driveway, the moon in her fullness looking down from beyond the clouds, calling me to stop and be with her. She was like an eye within the shapes of the passing clouds, looking down over her family, her charges. I've been reading Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, full of honor for the work of the lives of women: childbearing and loss, infertility, cooking, loving, raising families, supporting one another, midwifery and healing. Tonight, I saw the moon through the eyes of the story, which echoed what we know of many of our human cultures - the moon as a primal force in our lives, on our bodies. A mother watching over us, an anchor for us into eternity. I knelt down, opened my arms to her, welcoming her more deeply into my life, into my workings. The baby wriggled sleepily in my belly.

While the honor of the midwifery trade is powerful in Diamant's story - and I feel deep gratitude to think of how many women are led into this profession through the influence of her book - it is the work with herbs that has called me, and that spoke to me loudly tonight. As clear as was the directive last night to begin my work in sharing fertility awareness with women, tonight's was a deeper tug, a much more encompassing sense of my potential path, should I choose to take it up.

I have, for some years now, thought that if I ever find my way into a career of sorts, I would hope that it be one that is essential. One which, should our people ever find ourselves thrown out of our comfy universe back into a life from and of the earth (whether from war, flooding, civil unrest, etc), would be work that would help to sustain us. Trapping, cooking, healing in all its forms, midwifery, carpentry, leadership, wisdom. Many skills would aid in survival. Healing with herbs and food, which I have an innate interest in, certainly would have a place.

Walked on through the yards, feeling and knowing myself as I have not for years, an almost forgotten quality in myself - competence. I knew tonight, taking and giving myself solitude, that I have it in me to be a healer. When I rush myself from one task to another, when I deny myself and am denied by circumstances the grounding influence of solitude, I lose touch with my own strength, my fortitude, my ability to be certain of anything other than my own weaknesses. But tonight, in the dark with the moon as my only companion, I felt I was reaching into the depths of my memories of who I have been in this life, and found that, given the space and time, I have the same confidence in me that I knew ages ago, in another lifetime. The same surety that I can accomplish my purpose.

As I returned to our house down the driveway, my two dogs - the one who was lost to us last year, and my childhood dog, dead many years ago - trotted along beside me.

Night Talking

Came home today. Tonight, walked out into the dark drizzle, knew I didn't need a timer on this night to let myself relax into my time outside. Called gently down to the yard, and walked out away from the house. Passed the apple tree, paused outside the coop, listening to the rain on the compost bin, the blackberry leaves. Directed to the fire pit my husband and son built for me last week, ringed with the angular, broken rocks dug up over time from under the earth of our yard. A beautiful pit. One large, flat stone laid in the ground on the eastern edge as a stepping stone, an altar. Walked to the pit, carrying the sage and lighter I'd known to carry out with me. Smudged the pit, myself, giving thanks to the sage, to the fire. Crawled into the circle in the ground, knowing that this is counter to my relationship with fire places but feeling clearly and powerfully that this was what I was to do.

I curled myself within the ring of the fire pit, smelling both the chickens who love to visit the raw earth there and the ashes of the fire my family shared in it last week. On my side, the ring of rocks around me, I felt as safe as if I were in the earth itself, safe as a baby in its womb. I remembered our sweats down south with our spiritual community there, our Teoshpe, the power and sure safety of our sacred fires within the dome of the lodge. I felt cradled by Creator, cradled by the earth, in the center of all light and goodness.

*My time away from them has dimmed my memory of the term. Will enter it when it returns to me.

Clearing

Couldn't post this writing last night, as I didn't have access to the computer.


Walked out tonight once the boy was asleep and I was ready to rouse myself from the bed. Phone rang, husband calling to report one chicken missing from our coop when he shut them in for the night. After we hung up, I settled myself on the cushion on the porch. My comfortable sense of security was stirred up from the small touch of uncontrollable loss - potential, at least; our chickens have gone missing once before only to have turned up roosting in the branches of the forest.

Listening again to the buzzing, chirring, clicking insects of the night, it was abundantly clear why we humans were more in touch with nature when we all lived our lives out of houses. When we went to sleep each night surrounded by such choruses, it was a matter of course that we would know who calls in what season, etc. It is only now, when most of us shut our wooden doors and glass windows to the heat, the cold, the bugs, the dark, that we find it remarkable for someone to be familiar with the nuances of the seasons.


Looking up to the shimmying ends of branches above me, the moon's hazy glow through the clouds, my mind almost quiet, I felt myself talking directly with Creator, open to the world, to messages, to my source, to my depths. Felt like a sudden openness, welcome relief from my small, personal world of worries and desires.


A child's cry drifted out the windows of the neighbors' house, then a man's hard voice. I was again shown my recent vacation from the hard realities, the lull I've been living in, magical days spent with my son and my mother, sheltered from any direct exposure to most forms of suffering. I thought of my husband's days, spent as a social worker, and silently tried to conjure an image of what kind of work I could do now, what kind of help I can offer. And into my head came my midwives' invitation to teach a class on fertility awareness, a woman's way of becoming in touch with her body's cycles which I have found hugely empowering and which, I have told the midwives, I feel every one of us deserves to learn in adolescence. Perhaps this, then, is where my work lies.


Looking up at the trees, smelling the wind, feeling the closeness of the dwellings, the adventures everywhere, the strangers everywhere, drifting through my heart came mists of my years spent in the city, my friendships and relationships from those times.

The Path

Staying at my mom's in the city. Rough time putting the boy down, my impatience, exhaustion, need to be alone thwarting any attempts he made to distract me into playfulness.

Slept for a bit after he drifted off. Woke up and knew I needed to sit, but rested a bit more, on the edge of sleep. A few minutes later, it was suddenly entirely clear to me that either I get up and go outside in that moment or I would fall asleep and miss my sit for the night. Up I got.

I've been remembering that I have the option to follow these messages, this guidance, daily. One could, I know, follow them every moment, walk the path Creator lays for us, live as "God's hands" in the world. I have been friends with a woman who strives to do so, to see and to let go of her own personal desires, opinions, anger. To release her ego's control over her choices and instead follow the guidance she receives in every matter. To live following her Inner Vision, as Tom Brown would put it. I feel that to make this choice is part of the ultimate fulfillment of my own path. I know already that the guidance is available to me in nearly every moment, from whether to have a second helping of food to how to comport myself in disagreements with my husband for our mutual benefit. When I give it a moment, the path is usually made clear to me, but until very recently I have been forgetting to even consult this guidance, and have instead been giving priority to only my own wants and opinions.

To live this way, with this discipline, is so contrary to our wider culture - the mainstream, at least - which makes it seem more out of reach, more difficult to attain. And yet I know that people on spiritual paths of all kinds have been living in such a way for much of human history. The Iroquois maxim to consider the impact of every decision on the seventh generation into the future is part of this path. Walking the path of awareness in the meditative sense is part of it. Yet seeing people in my life who are actually living in this way is the most powerful frame of reference for me. My friend, in particular. I can see her personal sacrifices, I have benefitted from her resulting generosity, and I have witnessed the power she is gifted in return for her labors. As she is naturally in communication with Creator all throughout the day, she is a seer, and has helped to guide many people with the insights and comprehension granted her by Creator, the universe. I think that perhaps we all are equal tools for Creator in life, each with her or his own sort of powers. I believe that the day will not come that I am able to offer my own highest gifts until I have undertaken this path, the path of following my guidance far more than I do now, following it by second nature.

Sat out tonight on my mother's porch. Four different kinds of buzzing, clicking insects filled every space with sound. The hum of cars and trucks in the background. Electronic voices and music seeping out into the night through open windows. My belly full and round with the baby, my mood still tight with residual irritation from the bedtime struggle. The moon lifted herself gently above the branches as I sat. The trees in neighbors' yards tower over my mother's house and yard, so much taller than ours in the country.

Trading

I made a deal with the spirit world, Creator, the universe today. A small one, but significant to me.

On a recent canoe trip with my father and my boy, I found, half buried in a sandy portion of the riverbed, a small, smooth, flat shard of clay. I cannot help but believe that the clay is a broken piece of pottery that was shaped by human hands ages ago, that people used it beside or in that river, that somehow it found its way beneath the sands of the riverbed. I came upon it a few days after very heavy rains, which had, perhaps, unearthed it from where it had been resting.

The veracity of my beliefs aside, this flat little triangle of rust-colored clay holds great weight for me. In its presence on the windowsill above my sink, in the experience of holding it in my hands, I feel graced by tangible evidence of our past. Of our old connection to the earth, from the days when we used the gifts she provided easily, building our vessels, our belongings, from resources that did not harm her either in their making or in their decaying. I feel connected to the person - most likely a woman, if our histories are correct - who fashioned that particular vessel out of that clay. To her family, to her village, to the plants and animals they knew and understood. It helps me to believe, to truly trust, that there was a time when all humans knew how to live off the earth. To envision our people knowing how to survive, raise our children, pass on our cultures to future generations, independent of everything but our local communities and the earth.

I questioned, that day, my decision to bring it home with me. Was its rightful place not there in the river, where its original owner had left it? And yet, what a gift it is to me to hold it and look at it, to have an ancient scrap of my species' history in my own home, reminding me of who we have been, who we can be.

We returned to the river today, and as I packed for the trip, I took it off the windowsill in preparation to return it to the sands I'd taken it from. In holding it again, I again felt its significance to me, the medicine in it for me, and I longed to keep it in the house. So I offered to trade for it. I touched the earth, waited for a feeling, a knowing of what would be a fair offer.

In exchange for this piece of our past, I have committed to sit outside and to write here every day for a week. Perhaps these will be the hearty, shapely writings I prefer to post, or perhaps they will more resemble notes or vague impressions. But I will do it for a week, in thanks for the pottery.


Tonight, after a long day riding on the gentle waters of that river, I sat out in our back yard under a bright moon, beside the little cherry sapling we planted two years ago. I lay back on the ground in the dark, listening to an urge that I generally dismiss out of hand, not wanting the dew to moisten my clothing. I have been lately humoring these little urges more, these whims, so vibrant in childhood, that add so much to our lives and that so often are silenced and ignored, to our detriment, in our honed, convenience-seeking adulthood. I lay back on the grass, felt the moisture on my back, and gazed up from my new vantage point. I found myself looking up through the cherry, where I have only ever looked down at the little thing. The night sky and moon shone beyond the darkness of its leaves.

The branches it now feeds and raises to the sky are the same that it will hold up in twenty years, with any luck. Today they seem so haphazard, as such small amounts of growth have generated each, but they are the shape of what is to come. They already tell us the tree's plans for growth, for shape; they have only to change in size, weight, shadow.

Shimmers

Up this morning with the boy. Instead of our usual routine of letting the chickens out and coming back in to start breakfast and do cleaning, I brought my coffee out and we sat together under the apple tree, the chickens off searching the neighbors' yards for bugs. The sun was still just coming up, flickering on and off our faces as the apple's leaves danced in the breeze. Dew on the grass, the yard shimmering, like the first morning in the world.

The light Sunday traffic left the world quiet, room enough for birdsong and wind. Knowing how many other folks were also enjoying a day of free time lifted the dampening effect I sometimes experience from knowing that the blessing of leisure time is so unevenly allotted among humans.

Dismissing my invitation for him to "mow" so I could sit in the chair and enjoy my coffee in stillness, the boy preferred to snuggle on my lap and watch the day come. He discovered the tiny black and gold beads sewn to my skirt, but, to his chagrin, could not convince me to let him pull them off and play with them. So we sat quietly together in the perfect morning, he fingering his little discovered treasures, I stroking his clean, soft hair that glowed golden-white in the morning sun, both of us adoring the beauty we beheld.

Later in the morning, we joined friends and their family at a beach to celebrate the 2nd birthday of their daughter, our boy's playmate. A friend of the family, an avid kite-flyer, had made simple mylar kites for each of the children. He set them up in the sand behind our gathering in a loose zig-zag, their strings buried in the sand to anchor them. The effect was a marvel to behold. Seven shimmering splashes of color hovering above us, golden tails dancing and jumping in the wind, rustling their kite-music above us all day. It was such an announcement of celebration, of joy in being alive, that flurry of kites in the sky.

My parter and our boy spent much of the morning together, and I found myself with a rare opportunity to be alone. Our gathering was in full swing, everyone enjoying each other, and all of the children well-accompanied. I brought my then-damp towel out behind our bags and kiddie tents and laid it on the hot sand under the kites. I lay back on the ground, the sun warming me after my chilly swim, and looked up at the kites. They'd been given more slack to help them catch the wind and were higher up above us than when they'd started, just small patches of color speckling the blue sky. I closed my eyes, listening to their fluttering, to the family talking, laughing, happy together, the gulls crying their songs. The sun was like a hot blanket on my chilly skin, and the baby shifted in my belly. I thought back to the early morning under the apple tree, such perfect stillness and contentment, and loved the equivalent perfection of this boisterous moment in the world.

Later, I walked down to the water to join my family. They were sitting, the boy wet and chilled and perfectly content in his father's lap, at the edge of the water, both of them delighted in a game they'd invented. The boy's little wrinkled hands were cupped within my husband's cupped hands, both of them laughing as they tried to catch the water as the waves washed up and around them.

Kaleidoscope

harvested another twenty minutes of sitting tonight.

greeted again by the busy chickens on my way to the tree, their paths following mine toward the tree and then turning to the sandbox as i ascended.

gentle wind on my face as i sat. something in its quality made it feel just like the ocean breezes i grew up with, but the scent was bland, lacking the distinction of saltiness.

worked on my vision tonight, my focus dancing between the expanse of my peripheral vision to the left, right, top, and bottom of my visual field and my running list of things that need doing.

i was surprised at how easily i was able to reclaim my focus and direct it again toward my vision. as i gradually combined my awareness of all the edges of my visual field so that i was focusing attention on all of them at once, not focusing on any one point as we tend to do in daily life, the scene before me changed. first it appeared as a kaleidoscope, divisions of triangles and trapezoids in the pine branches and needles and sky. then it appeared to me as a collage that slowly became three-dimensional, each small movement of my breathing revealing the depth of the vision, the images beyond the images. every space formed by crossing branches - ten thousand bits of sky held between tiny pine branches and twigs - formed a piece of the artwork.

Drought

sat tonight, first time in a long drought of solitude.

husband spoke today of his need to have some time alone at some point today, which reminded me of my own right to claim time to myself when his presence makes it feasible.

walked out toward the tree after putting the boy down for the night, and was greeted with not just the usual one or two friendlies, but our whole dear flock of chickens running to me. hadn't been out in the yard today; were they wanting for entertainment other than each others' company? no one was missing, so i don't believe it was for protection. i knelt by them and fed the bold ones clover, then walked on.

i greeted the tree and ascended to my sitting branch, avoiding the short strips of blue/purple sap that decorated the trunks. i sat, thinking about the companionable chickens, noting the growth of the little maple and of our garden since my last sit. after a few minutes of sitting in thought, a large black and white bird, a little smaller than a crow, glided past me, just below the branch i was sitting on, presumably unaware of my presence in its flight path. i heard its body cutting through the still air, but too quick and too peripheral to my vision to get a clear sighting. it brought to mind the flicker who careened into the tree when i was first starting the 30-day challenge this spring; a big treat right at the start of my sitting. it motivated me to continue on, but i expected a treat every few days and was disappointed when it turned out to be a one-time deal. glad to have the memory of that lesson, reminding me to temper my excitement and keep an even keel in my expectations of sits.

the baby moved, a soft little jerk of a feeling in my abdomen.

started to tune in to all the sounds i could hear, then my mind drifted around: perhaps i can give myself 20 minutes a night on the porch to practice fire by friction, after the boy goes down every night. a month's commitment to this should get me somewhere with this practice i've longed to pick up for years. but i'll need to finally find myself a good set of tools, which is always what slows me down...

remembered that i'd been tuning in to my hearing, and closed my eyes again. a cricket to the south, as well as a bird chirping away at some distance and another singing intermittently close by. the neighbors' mower, and cars on the road. a constant insect buzz, one i hear in tall grasses in the summer and used to assume were crickets until finally realizing it doesn't actually start and stop like crickets, leaving me at a loss after three decades of sharing the summer with these insects close by.

the baby moved again.

opened my eyes. wondered what time it was, how soon i could stop trying to be alert and just go inside. felt a fleeting frustration about my resistance to attempting to stay awake, then remembered writing about this frustration during the challenge. how after two or three weeks of effort this spring, i suddenly moved into a state of much more active awareness.

it is achievable.

Ragged

Watching a news clip of my old friend's arraignment this week, it shows him finally looking as ragged as it seems one would be at this point. When he was first captured and shown being escorted into the police car, he looked exactly, to the T, as he had when we all used to spend time together years ago, which was shocking to me. Seeing the difference between the two videos of him makes me wonder if he had been in some sort of shock-induced denial of what he had done, and if his present raggedness reflects the truth settling into him.

I am finding that the presence of his acts and his family's experience continues to recede in my daily thoughts, and that the easiest way for me to make sense out of it all is to imagine that he had some sort of a psychological break, because those acts were so counter to everything I knew about him beforehand.

On another note, our chickens, now two months old, have been enjoying free run of our yard (and our garden, when they find their way into it) for a couple of weeks now. It is a deep, pure pleasure to watch them scratching and pecking their way through the grass and compost pile.

"Unspeakable"

I found out this week that an old friend of mine had just done some terrible things to his family, bad enough to shake everyone who heard of it. He was not a dear friend, but a good one, and had been a part of my small circle of friends for a good couple of years while I’d lived in that city.

For the next couple of days, whenever my mind was unoccupied, all of my thoughts circled around him and what he did to his family. I imagined the scenes, grappled with the truth of it, with the unreal nature of it, the horror of it. I prayed for his family, for the ones left behind, for their friends and communities. And for him, for the hell he must be in, at least some part of him. I’ve not slept much lately, lying in bed looking at my little boy, contemplating the child growing within me. His acts made them seem so utterly vulnerable, so transitory. Yes, we are alive and happy now, but so were his children, and then within the span of a day they were gone, dead. How to expect my own little ones to survive in this world if two other little ones can be ended by those who love them? Every child I saw, even in storybooks, seemed to me to be so transitory, ethereal. How can we hold them close when they could leave us in an instant?

When the news finally came that he had been caught by the police, something suddenly let go inside of me. I marched past my family, unable to explain myself, and went straight outside. Once in the sun, my feet on the grass, the trees standing surely ahead of my in their places, waves of comfort washed over me. It was like diving into water, the crisp difference between being within walls and being out in the natural world. I walked to our apple, listened to the voice within me, lay down on the earth, on the soft moss there, flattened my body so that much of me was touching the earth. I could feel my horror, my sorrow, my confusion being absorbed by the earth. I could feel the permission, the invitation, to melt and let it all come rushing out, all of the tears I’d been too shocked to cry, the sobs now wracking my body. After a time, I obeyed again the voice within me, this time to look upward towards the tree. I rolled onto my back, looked up to the glowing green leaves, and a little cloud beyond them caught my eye. It was a remarkably small little wisp of a cloud, in the company of several others like it, and they all glided slowly, silently by in the sky, in the vast blue sky. A little flotilla of clouds, drawing my eyes and my thoughts up and away from all the things on the earth, all the emotions and understandings on the earth, up to the wispy, momentary vision of a little band of clouds, a perfect moment in the universe.

"It was a day in that blue month, September
Silent beneath the plum trees’ slender shade…"

This moment of seeing the tiny clouds floating so effortlessly and perfectly across our blue sky, in and out of view beyond the leaves of our dear old apple, lifted away in an instant the intensity of my feelings, as suddenly as, and more astonishingly than, when I first had stepped outside and felt myself succumb to it all.

Now spending some time away from home with my partner and his family this weekend. This morning I cared little about visiting, interacting with anyone, and during a rare brunch that my husband and I were able to share alone as the family watched our boy, I found myself in and out of presence with him, listening to him talk and feeling tears fill my eyes when I wasn’t even consciously thinking about it all. Realized in the car on the way back from town that I’m in mourning, that this is grieving. I hadn’t met his family, didn’t know them, only had felt happy when I’d learned that he’d married a woman he loved and a couple years later when I heard that they had kids. But I’m mourning them now, mourning the dear little children whose love for their father had been betrayed, his wife whose life had been so unfairly ended by someone who shouldn’t have had the power to do such a thing, her mother, too, who had opened her home up to their family. I’m grieving my memories of his friendship, of our nights out listening to music and all dancing together to local bands, our gang’s adventures in the city, silliness on the subway, all the walks we’d taken in nature with our friends. All the goodness that had surrounded him, that is now utterly overshadowed by a darkness, by his “unspeakable” acts, as the police describe them.

I’m finding that as today has worn on, my mind and heart have finally begun to return their focus to the goodness that exists in the world. Instead of seeing children and thinking of them as essentially vulnerable, I’m able to hold the perspective that most children live out relatively safe lives, that his family is by far an exception. Tonight I made our bed after putting my boy down for the night on it. As I fanned the sheet out over the bed, it covered most of his body for an instant, until I put it in place. For a moment I was reminded of the image of dead bodies being similarly covered by a white sheet, but quickly I found that the serenity of the moment, my boy’s safety, my utter love for him and his sure knowledge of it, far outsung any ugly thoughts that lingered.

It is refreshing, and feels strangely new, to see so clearly how my mind has been able to refocus on those things that are healthy and healing in life. When I visit my thoughts about the events of the week, I can see clearly that I’ve placed them in a box and closed the lid for a bit. But I also can see that this is providing me with a chance to recharge, to enjoy this time with our family, to rejoice with my boy and my nephews as they all frolic together, instead of living in my thoughts and imaginings of awful things. Surely I will delve back into it all, surely I have a lot more to explore and accept about it all, but I gladly accept this moment now, in which the beauty and goodness of the world are in sharpest focus.

Sharing

Had a fright today. Tonight, after putting the chickens in, felt some very strong directions in my walk back through the yard. I was led to a red maple near where the incident had occurred, and from it a vision came to me that helped me understand how the issue would be resolved. I was grateful for the gift of some sense of how things will work out, and reached up to touch its leaves, look up into its branches in the dark.

I gave my thanks to the tree for sharing what it knew, and then knelt down to touch the earth and asked that I may give as I am able, that I may act when I am called to act.

Tapping

Out in the dark tonight to close up the chicken coop. Paused for a moment on my busy way back to the house to take in the vision of the fireflies' lights hovering over the shadowed lawn. Promised myself I'd only stop for a moment, but then, in stillness, I saw how many of them there actually were - far more than I'd been able to glimpse while tromping along in my mind.

Stopped finally. Stopped after days, weeks of choosing to be pulled on by the leash of productivity and busyness. Sensed the curvature of the earth in the yard, awoke to the coolness of the breeze touching my skin. The leaves in the far trees rustled, rustled in the wind dancing through them, satisfying music after a long, dry spell of blocking out most ambient outdoor sounds. The apples behind me held silent in their patch of still air. The pullets in the coop pecked against the walls, a quiet, surreal tapping in the dark.

What a fantastic argument our minds are able to present: We are so important on this earth, it is so necessary to devote each second of our time to "getting things done," that we cannot allow ourselves even such a five-minute stillness.

The Edge

I've been hearing on the radio about two young women who were kayaking in Maine this week, disappeared, and later were both found "unresponsive" in the 48 degree water - dead. First they had not shown up when they were expected to, then their empty kayaks were found, and finally their bodies were found. They were 18 and 20.

With our world-wide media, tales of young people dying come to us all the time, and we can develop a numbness to this information out of necessity. But something about these girls' story struck me deeply. I heard about it when they were simply missing, and then again once their bodies had been recovered. I can imagine them going out happily for their Sunday kayaking, I can imagine a variety of waves, accidents that could have flipped one and then the other into the water, their last moments in this life. And I can imagine the people who love them, mourning them now and forever.

Their deaths came to them with such swiftness; not through an illness in which it could have been anticipated, but just by an accident that happened to befall them both that day. In the morning they were alive, planning an adventure, and later that day their lives were done.

The knowledge of what has happened to these two young women reminds me forcefully, deeply, that we are all right at the edge of death all the time - potential death, at least. Are we not? A gas explosion, a heart attack, food caught in our throats as we eat alone... A few years back, a man in western Mass was walking down the sidewalk when a manhole cover was blown high into the air by a freak explosion in the sewer pipe and landed on him, crushing him. Death is with us, around us every moment, and we simply don't know when it will take us. (Garrison Keillor's chosen poem for today's Writer's Almanac touches this subject, as well.)

This knowledge is a gift: we are straddling the line between life and death at every moment. When this knowing comes to mind, it offers an effortless route to an especially sacred presence. Because if I might die in five minutes (or one minute), then it does not really matter if I get through my to-do list for the day. It matters that I really listen to and look at my boy as he chatters about his world to me. It matters that I drink in the astonishing sheen on the swallow's feathers out the window. That I notice and point out to my boy the gentle way the clouds are moving across our sky. What a precious gift, this awakening to what actually matters, when we are also gifted a little more time to love it all.

Intentions

Now that the challenge has ended, I'm going to return to my use of this blog as a place to record, reflect upon, and share a variety of my experiences, mostly in the natural world, some at my sit spot, and some otherwise.

Reverie - May 11

Afternoon sit.

Robins, jays, red-winged blackbirds. Someone repeated a high, falling “peee-oooo,” just like the initial whiz of fireworks immediately before they “pop”.

After a cold morning, a tickling, playful wind was sweeping through, just warm enough to keep it comfortable, buffeting against me as I sat on the limb.

The little maple claiming its ground under my sit pine has fanned its leaves out into a sheet, which was catching the afternoon sunlight head-on. Older, larger leaves reached out on long stems to make room for a scattering of sizes of smaller leaves closer to the branch, each with stem length relative to size. The combined effect was a fluttering, glowing, green work of art.

Sit Spot, Day 31 (May 10)

Afternoon sit. Thought about what someone said about revisiting an old sit spot. During this last day of the challenge, I looked down to my old sit spot at the base of the tree I sit in now and welcomed any memories of those sits that wanted to reveal themselves. What came up didn’t include any specific insights or learnings, but rather filled me with a sense of having been complete during that time, having been deeply in touch with who and what I am. A knowing welled up within me that during those sits during last year’s challenge, I had been nurturing myself in a way that helped me be the person I am supposed to be in this life, the person I am capable of being when I work at it.

This raises the question of whether I am walking that path as closely now as then, since I have been sitting and reflecting on my sits as regularly recently as during that time. I can certainly see that I’ve settled into awareness and silence when I sit – I’m worlds away from where I was when I started this 30-day challenge. But I wouldn’t say that I feel decidedly closer to walking my true path than before. Perhaps growth of this sort can only been seen in retrospect.

I thanked the tree for holding me and hosting my sits, thanked the Earth and her inhabitants for being with me and teaching me during the sits.

aaargh!

My (very powerful) demon whose sole purpose is to try to prevent me from ever completing tasks caught on to the fact that I have only one more post to do before officially completing the 30-day challenge.....hang on....I'll write this weekend (travelling tomorrow, so tomorrow will be genuinely hard).

Balancing...

Been working on balancing my home life with my sits, now that the imagined obligation of the challenge is over. Sat yesterday and today, but gave up the writing time for other pursuits. Plan to write tomorrow.

Sit Spot, Day 30

Last day of the 30-Day Sit Spot Challenge, hosted by Wilderness Awareness School's Kamana program, though the end date was originally set at May 10, so I'll consider it done tomorrow.

Twilight sit, at the tail end of another Parrish sky.

Brisk, hearty, cold wind shoveling down from the North. It was a strong presence over the land tonight, calling up the voices of every tree and bush, every whistling corner of every house.

The familiar sound of leaves rustling in the wind took me by surprise, after a season's absence. The maple leaves have completed just enough growth to offer up their own rendition of the wind's music.

The nearer cricket in the back yard was silent for half my sit, then started up with a slow selection of quiet, weak calls. Is it the cold slowing him down, or the remembered terror of the lawn mower passing by this afternoon? Peepers also were silent for some time, then two of them struck up a duet just before I went inside.

Sit Spot, Day 29

Afternoon sit.

Drizzly day. Low clouds, cool, moist air.

Felt the rainwater on the pine bark as I sat and leaned against the trunk, but was grateful for it after a day spent indoors, numb to so many of life's sensations.

Red-winged blackbird and robin called as I sat. Fog hung over the trees in the distance. Three cold raindrops fell in quick succession on my forehead, then none.

The water on the bark showed me color variations in it that I had overlooked before. Most of the bark had a dark-green sheen to it, some kind of plant life growing across it. But within the green there were some rusty red patches, where it seemed a thin layer of bark was missing. Squirrel marks crossed my mind, but the trunk is tortuous as it rises and this was on the side leaning towards the earth, so the hypothetical squirrels would have to be ascending while somewhat upside-down. I assume squirrels would want to ascend the easiest route possible, so I ruled this option out.

Is the red in the patches the color of the inner layer of bark, or is it another kind of plant/fungi/etc. that prefers to grow on that layer of bark? Looking forward to viewing it tomorrow, under drier conditions.

Sit Spot, Day 28

Night sit.

The air was moist and thick with the scent of cut grass.

Cricket song. Couldn't tell whether it was one or two tonight. There weren't any obviously overlapping calls, but at times it seemed almost constant, making me think there were two calling in tandem. I decided to investigate, and walked towards the calls to determine where the sound was coming from. As I passed under the blossoms of the apple, I looked up to admire them against the night sky and a creature - a moth? - flew against the corner of my mouth.

The sound of the cricket calls was deceptive: I kept thinking myself right upon it, until moving a couple more steps and finding the call coming from over another few yards. The sound finally split and I knew they were two: both situated in long grass on either side of the driveway behind our house. One of them let me come quite close before going silent. When it was calling near me, the sound was so clear and loud that I felt I was hearing the vibrations from the individual ridges on the cricket's body.

One lone peeper, one lone (tree?) frog.

As I looked outside while closing the door behind me, another moth (?) flew into my face, hitting the same corner of my mouth.

Sit Spot, Day 27

Sat out tonight.

Peepers' calls are very faint now, just a small band at a distance.

One lone cricket is continuing his solo in our backyard.

The cold wrapped itself around me and I worked at accepting it as it was, vaguely uncomfortable but so true to itself.

The stars held firmly their places in the sky, constant beings that they are.

A voice overhead said "bzip." A few minutes later, another "bzip" from another direction. Do bats call?

Sit Spot, Day 26

Sat out this morning in the tree. Dusty sunlight filling the pine needles, the spaces and branches looking just like a playground for birds and children.

Picked up a pine cone that was eyeing me on my way up. The cone was fully open, its scales arching back to free the seeds. I've noticed only during this month of sits that they open during the day and close at night. Rich brown scales with a lighter, thicker tip, like a fingernail. Only a couple of seeds remained within. The cone had broken off the tree without much stem to speak of, and gummy sap, yellowish-white, sat on the outside tip of many of the scales, as well as on the stem end.

This will be my day to study and research.

Sit Spot, Day 25

Sat out at night.

The temperature is easy, even with a cold, sinewy night air that seems to be slithering over the land. The grass is wet and cold, vibrant with sensation. Stars. Clouds.

The stars that hold the shape of a lark have set for the season and other constellations have gained their ground, giving the night sky new stories, new pictures.

Peepers. Crickets. A motorcycle.

Everything is so fresh, real, alive. Unapologetic life, just as it is - exquisite.

Sit Spot, Day 24

Didn't sit today. Left it until the nighttime, which I'm realizing I can't do if I want a real chance at sticking to this routine, since my energy and discipline are only truly reliable in the daylight hours.

Sit Spot, Day 23

Still sitting regularly, just a little behind on writing.

Sat out at night. Songs of spring peepers and another frog whose call I don't know yet drifted from a distance. The first cricket I've heard this year called and called from our backyard.

Again, just wanted to stay outside all night. I seem to be temporarily free of the struggle to be present and content during my sits, after two or three weeks of gritting my teeth.

Sit Spot, Day 22

Staying at my father's tonight, in the mountains. Sat out at night.

The only other time I've done my sit here, I sat just outside the cabin door the whole time, both eager and fearful at the prospect of hearing the wildlife I knew must be all about me. I was on hyper-alert, not relaxed but certainly tuned in to my senses. I remember noticing the dark trees overhead against the night sky, and how shadowless and obscured the forest seemed. And indeed, at the tiniest rustling in the grasses near my feet - a small rodent, to be sure - I flew inside, heart beating quickly. I was shocked and embarrassed at how frightened I was, but the fear of the unknown was strong in me, no matter how I wanted myself to feel.

Tonight, I moved instinctively away from the lights at the cabin, wanting my eyes to become better adjusted to the darkness, and wanting to distance myself from the lights I figured would make animals wary. I sat quietly in the driveway, opening up to the night, the lovely darkness, shadowless tonight as on that night. I shortly heard the same rustling in the grasses, and silently greeted the little being going about its night work. More rustling in other areas, and I felt comforted in knowing I had more company in the night. The gift of these sits over the past few weeks have been many, and tonight showed me just how strong and precious are the lessons that have come into my life through this routine: they've moved me from fear to welcome greeting of the noises in the night.

I had the same feeling tonight as last night: complete comfort in the nighttime, so much so that I wanted to stay out all night and sleep under the dark sky, surrounded by the creatures and plants and Earth.

Sit Spot, Day 21

8:45-9:30 tonight.

The sky still held a bit of light as I sat tonight, a hint of Maxfield Parrish blue. The trees and bushes were still barely visible against the earth, even without the moon up yet.

I moved quietly up into the tree, having to duck under a small, thin, dead branch I did not remember, hanging directly in front of the branch I sit on. It was still securely attached to the tree, so it had not recently fallen or broken, but it bent down almost vertically within the path I generally move, restricting the space I had to navigate.

I was not quite as tired as I usually am at this time of night, and was coming down after a day of new relief: my husband completed his last day of grad school yesterday, and already today he had more energy to help with our boy, preparing meals, all those household things I've been holding down since our son was born. Perhaps this relief is what supported the sacred sit I had tonight.

Perhaps, also, the spirit of my dog was lending his love. His last full day in that life, his last good day in that life, was a year ago today.

Regardless of what good energy uplifted me tonight, I sat in the tree like an animal. I first realized what a grounded place I was in when I recognized that I had no fear whatsoever of animals being in the tree with me. On my first night out, I carried with me a strong fear of the unknown in the tree, of what harm could befall me from placing myself outside in the night in the forest. Tonight, I just sat in the tree like everyone else - the birds, the insects, any animals sharing it as well. It occurred to me to check in with the spider-web indicator: if I am one of the holding points of a spider web connecting me to all other beings around me, am I holding it gently, in balance, as nature does, or am I pulling it, twisting it out of shape with my human-centered cockiness, my irrational fears, my addiction to thinkingthinkingthinking?

And I saw, with quiet celebration, that the web conformed perfectly to the shape of the tree, the way some spider's webs are cupped, curving over several planes, based on the spider's design and the anchors available. I was a small, helpful anchor point for the web tonight, and I was grateful.

When thoughts did come to me, I pushed them on one by one, using the image of pushing images past while scrolling on an Ipod screen (I apologize). As one came up and hollered for me to focus on it, I just gave it a little stroke, pushing it on its way, making room for the next one and the next one, letting them all go, keeping me right there in the tree in the dark night.

I thought of the baby growing within me, so tiny yet, just at the beginning of its life in human form, if it decides to continue on this path. And I thought of all the other mother birds, mother animals, mother insects around me in the forest, on the land around us, who also sat in the still night, their babies growing silently and intently within them.

I was ready to spend all night in the tree, to sleep in the branches with everyone else. There wasn't really an aversion to going back inside, there simply wasn't any reason to go in. Everything I needed was there: fresh air, strong branches, darkness with just a couple of stars twinkling through the upper branches, spring peepers lulling us all into the night.

I climbed down when it felt time. As I began my descent, I had a strong feeling that I would do better to hold still than descend just at that moment, so I paused for a few minutes. I wasn't aware of anyone or anything changing around me, but suddenly the feeling lifted and I felt pushed to move then, so I followed the guidance and went out into the yard.

I paused a couple of times on the way to the house, kneeling on the wet grass, touching it with my hands. Still no reason to go in. Why would I go indoors? Why? It was the most natural thing in the world to be outside with all the other creatures, to get to be in the dark night, on the growing earth. Why discard this gift of belonging?

I followed my guidance as it continued to flow, and found myself led to kneel down on the ground. The choice we faced a year ago tomorrow regarding our dear little dog came washing over me, as it does when it gets a chance: To keep him alive through the excruciating two days of pancreatitis until he healed, and pay money we did not have readily available, or choose to end his life, sparing the future episodes he would likely experience, keeping our money in our hands, ending forever our days of holding him, giving him our love, the chance to make up for having withheld our compassion that his old, blind self so dearly needed?

We chose to end his life.

So tonight I knelt down, and I said for the first time that I believed we may have made the wrong decision by choosing to end his life that day. I believe that it may have been better if we had helped him to heal through that episode, pay the couple, three thousand dollars, and bring him home with us, healthy and vigorous as he was. When he died last year, it was after months of coldness from us because of his blind clinginess, our irritation with and crushing of his joyful singing when it happened to coincide with putting the boy to sleep. If we had helped him heal last year, we could have had another chance to love him, to help him to know his worth, to gentle his life of near-blindness and near-deafness, to take him on the walks he delighted in, to catch our frustrations with him and instead show him the patience and compassion we show our son. This may have been the better choice. Then, when another time came, if it did, to face these choices again, at least we would have filled him with love before sending him on.

It was immensely freeing to confess finally what I have been unwilling to face for this year, that we may have done an awful thing that cannot be undone. I don't know for sure whether we did, but just facing the possibility was real and good and strong, and freed me from the fear of it.

It felt good to say all of this in the night, and I felt complete after sharing it. I had said what I needed to say, and I knew I had been heard. I headed once more in the direction of the house, once more paused and drank in the night, my place in the night, and then felt a calling to go in and write.

Sit Spot, Day 19

Finished working at 12:30 at night, and skipped my sit today to go to bed.

Sit Spot, Day 18

Sat out in the afternoon today, with the suggestion to carve something at my sit spot.

Day has been drizzly. A cozy, still, eternal day. Just dripping here and there by the time I went out for my sit, and the birds were in a flurry of activity. A red-winged blackbird in our apple, calling and singing. Goldfinches were rocketing here and there in song, robins rounding out the chorus.

I took up a couple of old, dead pine branches from below the tree, but none felt right. Climbed up into the arms of the tree, where I was spoken to by a dead, broken limb I always duck my head under in my ascent. I asked the tree for it, felt a wave of love and happiness flow through me, and gently, quietly broke it off. Sat in a lower spot on the tree than usual to ensure stability for carving, and began to scrape the layer of green (fungus?) off the stick with my knife.

Pure heaven. Loads of avian companions singing their music, the misty air imbued with the lush scents of spring, a blessed, beloved tree holding me gently, and the time and permission to pursue an art I've been yearning to try for years.

Sit Spot, Day 17

Sat out tonight, 11-11:30 p.m.

Being with the trees and plants in the yard tonight was like gathering with family, easy togetherness. It's a still night, no wind, no appreciable cloud movement even. Only the sound of cars on the roads and the faint chirping of spring peeper choruses in the distance. The moon waxes full, floating, lost, in the cover of thin clouds.

The air was moist, delicious with the smell of cut grass. One bird - a warbler? - sang out a little tune from the trees across the field, across the dark night holding us all together.

Yes, Kate, I did have expectations of how this month would be, though they were, in fact, conscious. My memory of my monthly sits from two years ago is of a profound waking up to my senses. As I understand that the sense meditation is a big part of the sits, I'd wanted to accomplish this again this year. Thank you for helping me to re-evaluate these expectations, however, because I had become entrenched in my disappointment of not acheiving them. Tonight, coming at it with a fresh perspective, I was able to harness all of the energy I've been reserving for my disappointment and put it, instead, into simply using the sense meditation - this time, finally, without any preconceived notions of exactly how I was going to feel. I stopped trying, and this freed me up to experience what came along fully.

Raven, thank you for sharing about your own struggles at your sit spot, and especially for sharing so frankly about your sit yesterday. Sometimes we need to hear the stories of failure more than the stories of success, to remind us that failure is simply a portion of success. And yes, it seems as though our schedules are quite in synch. Knowing that there is at least one other soul out there in my shoes (and I know there are more of us who simply haven't written...yet) bolsters my faith in the existence of alert, weary sits!

Sit Spot, Day 16

Sat out in the morning. We had a rare spell today when my husband had a lot of free time to spend with our child, which meant I had a rare dose of time outside by myself without any constraints. What a gift.

I went to the tree but felt called to explore a little sunny area beside it, in the middle of our mini backyard forest of white pines, maples, and apples. The burnt orange pine needles are thick on the ground there, and I sat down in them and drifted into a reverie of plants, sunlight, breezes, birdsong. I was surrounded by Springtime, growth, everything pushing toward life.

Sat still for the minimum 20-minute sit duration, then, considering the option of going inside to do chores or taking a nap in the forest, I lay down on the needles. They provided such a cushion, and the earth beneath them was also so soft, that I was in complete physical comfort. The pine branches above me swayed in the breezes, and the sun that skirted them was hot on my face. I closed my eyes and focused only on the sounds around me, and felt my ears grow out like a deer's, amplifying and directing my sense of hearing threefold. There was a sudden, loud, active rustling in the leaves three feet away, but during the time it took me to slowly turn my head for a look, all became still and quiet.

Robins, cardinals, and others sang. A plant stood beside my head (Indian paintbrush?), long, silvery, hairy leaves holding the sunlight like a sculpture of light. The scent of the pine needles was heavenly, bringing back beloved memories of younger days of free wandering, endless days with the Earth.

My sit pine eventually began to shade most of the forest floor, and when the chill was sufficient to motivate me to move, I walked out onto the lawn in the sun and lay back down on the grass, now soaking the full heat of the sun into my skin and clothes.

It seemed I was being transported back to a morning in my younger years, when I was blessed with an infinity of moments free to spend outside. There was nothing but the sun, the warmth, the earth, the birds singing, and the gift of witnessing it all.

Sit Spot, Day 15

My struggle during this challenge has been to get out to my spot, get outdoors, with any kind of awareness at all.

I love to share the experiences I have at my spot, and I appreciate the responses I get from folks, but I feel like the only thing I'm really aware of when I'm at my sit spot is my lacking awareness. So as I reflect on how my sits have been so far this month, this is what comes up for me. My pattern of sleeping-mind-that-resists-awakening (coupled with feeling too physically drained to make myself wake up anyhow).

Sit Spot, Day 14

Nighttime sit.

In the spirit of having fun, I plopped myself down on the earth tonight rather than climbing the tree. The grass was wet with dew, which almost always drives my comfort-driven decision-making away, but tonight I summoned the memory of my playful child self, my bold, reinventing-the-world teenage self, and just sat right down in it, dryness be damned. I discovered that I barely took on any of the dew anyway.

The moon was floating on a long cloud kayak, and casting sure shadows on the land.

Our chicks arrived in the mail today from across the country, having hatched and been shipped off two days ago. One of them had died en route, packed in a box without its mother, stillness, or most other comforts. As I lay down on my back in the grass, I gave thanks for freedoms - clean air, the gift of feeling the ground beneath us, and the simple sky, the limitless sky above us, stretching into oblivion, giving us endless space, freedom.

Sit Spot, Day 13

Sat 9:45-10:15 tonight. Cloudy night, no stars visible. The clouds reflected the lights of the surrounding towns back down on the land, illuminating everything faintly.

Stalking past the chicken coop, I suddenly became aware that someone was watching me. It was as if there was a thick bubble all around this other being, and I was about to bump into it. I stood very still for a few minutes, and after a while I heard rustling in the compost bin about 15 feet away from me. I listened for a bit - skunk? rat? mole? The sound was intermittent and fairly quiet, so probably a small rodent, but at certain noises my mind began to generate images of a small rabid mammal seconds away from running at my ankles. I watched during these episodes of fear as my adrenaline rushed, and I imagined waves of vibrating energy moving out from me, probably alerting every other creature around that I was fearful.

Then a tool came to mind that sometimes does at opportune times. I imagined a perfect, flat spiderweb in the air connecting me to the creature in the compost and the trees and plants and everyone else around. We all were its anchor points, so we all needed to hold it in place properly. When I am in a frightened state (or, more often, a self-centered, mindless state), I am pulling and yanking on the part of the web I am supposed to be supporting, throwing it all out of balance.

Once this image of the communal spiderweb came to me, it instantly helped me to quiet my roaring thoughts and remember my responsibilities toward everyone around me - not just to my own faulty drive for self-preservation. My fear subsided quickly, and I felt myself growing smaller and quieter, almost becoming invisible, becoming part of the landscape.

I often shy away from this tool when it returns to me for exactly this reason - it never fails to remind me that I am not as significant as I like to imagine myself to be. It is this reminder in particular that jolts me out of my tornado of circling thoughts and plops me right into whatever moment I happen to be in. Because if I am not the center of everything, if I am only one small part with a shared responsibility toward everything else, that means that I have to actually pay attention to what others are doing around me, and ensure I am maintaining my proper place in the community.

I took my shoes and socks off and stalked back towards the house when I was done, but felt a pull to stop at the apple tree. I looked up in the misty night, and felt once again that sensation of being a tree rooted in the ground, arms lifted out and up to the sun. What a pure expression of life, a direct expression of everything we have to offer! I could feel my feet rooted in the earth, imagined my arms, my whole being, lifted up in love and celebration and gratitude toward the sun.

What would the world be like if humans could live as trees do? Sending our roots down through whatever kind of soil we find ourselves in, accepting all the nourishment available to us, and directing all our life energy toward that which nourishes us, be it the sun, creator, community, humanity....toward what we most cherish?

Sit Spot, Day 12

Sat in the pine, 8:30-9:00 a.m.

Still growing accustomed to how early the sun rises these days.

Many different kinds of birds were singing in the pines around me and beyond. Robins sang the only song I recognized.

Went through the body awareness scan, head to foot, then tuned in first to my vision and then to my hearing.

The world offers so much to us, such an infinite array of sounds and sensations and sights all in one moment. When I have been asleep, living in amongst my thoughts, as I have for months now, it requires such deliberate, hard work to let go of the thoughts and just open up to what is around me. And when I do, as I was able to for a few minutes today, I am simply overwhelmed by the cacophany, the chaos of sensations. I know from past experience that it is peaceful to live in a state of awareness most of the time, but from my current perspective, that "dull, vapid mindstate" (perfect description, Kate), there is simply too much to behold all at once.

I've been ignoring all of it for such a long time - the shifting sunlight on the pine needles, the different birdsongs all dancing through the air simultaneously, the nuances of light and shadow on the pine bough, the awareness of my own breathing body in the midst of it all - that to open up to all of it is to feel like my mind is exploding, like I'm going into a tidal wave too immense to survive.

Sit Spot, Day 11

Attempted an evening sit on the porch tonight, but was called to walk down amongst all the plants we've planted here. Tomorrow will be two years since we lost so many of our trees to development, and I thanked the cherry and peach we planted during the development for bringing new life to the land as so much was being torn up from it.

Cool breeze, with peepers sustaining their chorus from across the street. The moon and I exchanged greetings, and then a shooting star flashed overhead.

Sit Spot, Day 10

More good gatherings yesterday with the family.

I fell asleep several times last night as I completed my work, so my planned evening sit was abandoned in favor of bed, my first missed sit. I can see it in all of us, the grief exhausting our bodies, driving us to sleep. A cocoon of memory and mourning, growing into our new reality. This new version of the world without him.

Sat this morning, 8:30-8:50.

I was suprised to see the new inch of growth on what I believe to be a maple sapling growing under the pine I sit in. One of its slender blonde branches lies against the dark pine trunk that the flicker crashed into, and I had been watching the slow daily advancement of new growth rising from some leaflets on its end. During my few-days' absence from sitting in the tree, the extension has emerged entirely from the little cluster of leaflets, and has proven to actually be several new perfect little branches.

The birds were busy in song this morning, though I couldn't identify them by song alone and only got a couple of glimpses through the branches and needles.

Sit Spot, Day 9

Away from house and wasn't able to sit today, will pick up tomorrow.

Sit Spot, Day 8

10:10-10:30 tonight.

Sat again on the porch, as I was home alone with the sleeping boy again.

Another drizzly, drippy night. After an exhausting day, I'd promised myself that I could sit tonight for just 10 minutes, but once I was out in the cold, dark rain, I didn't want to come in.

Feeling chilled and tired and resisting the cold dampness of the air, I imagined myself a tree who loves the rain. It suddenly dawned on me what delight there must be in gaining nourishment directly from the earth, from the rain, from the sun. What a profound connection to all other life, simply to live the life of a tree.

Sit Spot, Day 7

Sat 11:00-11:10 p.m.

Sat tonight on the porch, as I had to stay near the house with my boy sleeping in it. He roused after just 10 minutes, so a short sit, as well.

Worked on tuning in to my hearing...rain drops falling in different tempos from different locations...a small, unidentified clicking sound, from where I could not tell...the whoosh of cars and trucks passing by now and then on the road...the satisfying crunch of tires on the gravel road next to our house.

A dear friend of my husband's family passed on today, and the lights in my in-law's house (behind ours) gave me comfort, knowing everyone was together there. Often I find myself wishing for more dark in the night, to let the land lie in darkness as it deserves at night, but tonight I was grateful for all the glowing windows.

Sit Spot, Day 6

Sat 9:30-10:30 tonight.

Stalked to the tree, pausing now and then as I felt directed to. Animals were all quiet save for a lone spring peeper some distance off, but night seemed active nevertheless. Well-bundled, only my hands and face fully exposed to the chill of the night air, I understood that even when humans consider winter to be over, the animals, birds, insects, all creatures living without heated homes still face the rawness that lingers in the night.

Approaching the tree, I knew I was already just waiting for the sit to be over so I could go inside and go to bed. My absence of awareness was clear to me when I recognized that I was viewing the tree two-dimensionally; I was only seeing the bare minimum of what there was to be seen. The majesty, depth, energy of the tree were completely obscured by my drive to be elsewhere, and all I was left with was the flat visual appearance of the tree - bark, needles, trunks - none of its character or strength.

This, I realized, is how I live so much of my days. Always on the quest to be someplace and some time other than when and where I am, waiting to finish work or finish cleaning the kitchen or finish making that phone call or finishing this or this or this, with the list always replenishing itself and me never attaining that illusory state of completion, when I can just rest and be. And so my relationships suffer, my every interaction suffers when I am not present, because I only behold portions of the people I'm around; their fullness and beauty are unavailable to me.

Tonight, facing my seemingly permanent state of sleep, I realized I should work on awakening my senses. And in the moment when I felt the cool, moist air moving across my face, saw the darkness all around me, heard the quiet night sounds, I was instantly in touch with the being of the tree. It can be a great struggle to open awareness up, but once called on, awareness opens paths for us to sense more than just sight, sound, etc. The senses, when awoken, share so much more of the world with us.

Sit Spot, Day 5

9:00-9:20 sit tonight.

Still find myself resisting the effort to be actively aware at my spot. The mindlessness and state of waking sleep I've been existing in for months now are holding me strong, and for the moment I am succeeding in going to my sit spot but not in sitting in awareness once there. It is suprisingly easy for me to keep to my daily sit spot routine, as though some part of me at least is committed to taking on this practice.

Having work to complete tonight, I knew I needed to keep my sitting time to the minimum of 20 minutes. I decided to forgo the slow stalk to my tree and instead to stalk only to the grass near it. This way, I could take the whole 20 minutes to just be still and work on awareness, and not risk moving quickly and flushing the birds from the tree, especially in this season of nesting.

The scent of pond wafted in at me as I approached the tree. I know this smell well, as one of my brothers and I wallowed many a summer day in a tiny frog pond a little distance from our house as children. The earthy, wet smell of adventure. I was reminded of the knowledge that humans can smell when water is nearby; this was certainly a wonderful example.

Very still evening. No wind, no frog calls. Just the occasional rustling in the briar bushes and one squeak. Memories of the night noises I heard in my youth from the mice I kept caged in my bedroom.

Still reluctant to follow my intuition, my guidance all the time. Where is the switch to throw that will give our will and ego over to the creator so we can just walk as we are guided every moment, all our lives? This sleepiness, dullness of my senses feels a direct response to the challenge of coming into my awareness. What I have to lose is the focus on and fulfillment of my personal desires, preferences and conveniences. What I have to gain is connection to every being in this world, connection to my core. What I have to gain is clarity of action, intent, and purpose.

Sit Spot, Day 4

8:30-8:50 a.m. sit today. Even though I had nothing pressing waiting for me after my sit as last night, my awareness only remained active for a few minutes before I started "waiting" to be done and get on with my day. I assume I am in a spell of resisting this new habit.

Little bird activity today, far different from the nuthatch and flicker sightings a couple of days ago. Is it because I sat out an hour earlier today? Are birds not up and active at 8:30 in the morning?

Sit Spot, Day 3

Sat this evening in the tree. Awareness and presence were a struggle for me today, as my mind clung to the knowledge of how much work I had to accomplish tonight in so little time. I found the evening to be rather disappointing, as there was little bird activity, and the mourning dove calling over and over above me actually irritated me, showing me exactly how caught in my mind I was.

I remembered Tom Brown's reminder that to be aware, one needs 1. Physical comfort, 2. Relaxation, 3. Passive thoughts (meaning not following the train of one thought or another but just letting them all come and go as they will), and 4. A point of focus (breath, sounds, etc).

So I made an effort to physically relax and let my thoughts become passive. After some minutes, I was rewarded with a momentary flash of how absolutely marvelous it was to simply sit in a tree in this world. What a gift to be able to see the variations in pine bark, much less get to hear a dove calling. My underlying tension returned, but only after the gratitude had helped shift my focus.

Sit Spot, Day 2

Stalked out to the tree early this morning, gloriously sunny daybreak full of bird activity. The birds were silent and absent when I first arrived, despite my attempted stealth. After a few minutes, two nuthatches began flitting about the tree, one feeding the other with his finds. Within a minute, he swooped down to investigate something just behind me, then appeared a moment later a foot from my head, hopping about and searching for food. He was so close I could see how disheveled some of his tiny feathers were. The two of them got the party going, and within a few minutes the tree was alive with movement and song.

At one point, it seemed that a large bird had suddenly careened straight into the far side of one of the pine's massive trunks, about 15 feet above my head, but afterwards there was no movement. I considered craning my neck around to try and determine what had occurred, or if I had imagined it, but decided it best to stay put. A minute later, the flicker who had made the spectacle hopped (or rather lumbered, compared to the nuthatches' daintiness) out from behind the trunk. It came out into view above me and looked about the tree, never looking down, then flew off and spent some time in the next tree over. Perhaps looking for a nesting area? I'll have to read up on them to see what their nesting habits are. But the possibility that the flicker was considering nesting there gave me immense motivation to stalk even more carefully from now on.

30 Days of Sit-Spots

I am again participating in the Wilderness Awareness School's 30-Day Sit Spot Challenge, in which folks commit to sitting outside in one spot for at least 20 minutes a day for one month. Today is the first day.

Day 1, 9:30 p.m.

I'd been wondering where to do my sits up until a few days ago. I was given a precious and rare couple of hours to myself by a babysitting relative, and had planned to use them to run some errands. But as I prepared to leave the house, I felt in no uncertain terms that I should instead be using the time to be outside. Not to do any particular thing, simply to GO OUTSIDE, not on errands. I tried and tried to reason my way into the shopping trip, so I could call it done, but eventually sat down for a minute and acknowledged that my inner voice always knows what is best for me, though more often than not its directions are in conflict with what I plan and what I want to do.

So out I went, weaving my way around the yard as I felt called, and after a bit found myself perched joyously and perfectly in the strong arms of a great white pine in the backyard. The very tree under whom I sat for the Sit Spot Challenge two years ago, but whom I hadn't considered for this challenge, having brought home two deer ticks from the brush around it in the past.

So tonight, out I went with a certainty that I was going to the spot that I had been directed to. I stalked through the yard, following my guidance as to which path to take, intent on leaving the mourning doves in the pines I passed undisturbed, having flushed them many a time as I've moved mindlessly through the yard at dusk. It was a roundabout path I was pulled on, and I trust that there were solid reasons for it, though these reasons may never come clear to me.

The branches of the pines I passed formed a visual framework between me and the sky, framed the glowing windows of my house, framed the moving lights of the cars on the road. I wondered who was asleep, or awake, in the trees above me. Was I moving quietly enough to keep the birds asleep, or was the whole forest awake and alerted to my presence? The songs of a few spring peepers danced from afar. Why so few tonight, when often they are in grand chorus?

I stalked closer to the tree, awkward in my hiking boots. I could feel the pressure of larger twigs under my boots as I moved to place them on the ground, but I couldn’t judge with any certainty that the ground I shifted them to didn’t have smaller twigs or leaves, waiting to snap or crunch, and several times I announced my presence to everyone within earshot.

I had an unease about being in these woods at night, small as this cluster of trees is, and familiar as the yard without it is. The external appearance of this little patch of woods is an everyday sight for me, but I don’t often venture into it, and never at night. Ringed on all sides by moderately-mown yards, many would scoff at the thought that it is “wild,” but it certainly held a wildness for me tonight. Who is asleep in the trees above me? Who nests on and under the ground around me? I’ve heard many a creature descend the trees around here at nightfall, the scraping of their claws on the bark calling out across the grass to my porch. Were any of them in my sit spot tree? If I were still for long enough in the lower branches, might they descend and become angry upon discovering me in their path?

As it turned out, I spent much of my 20 minutes stalking within a few feet of the tree, such was the quantity of twigs on the ground around it, and only made it up into the tree for a couple of minutes before it was time for me to go back into my house. As I slowly began my stalk down from and away from the tree, my sense of alertness and caution quickly ebbed, and I found myself re-writing my experience there: It wasn’t actually frightening at all – it’s just a tiny forest! Why would I think I could possibly get hurt?!

How much of the intensity of life do we obscure through our untruthful paintings of the past?

I stalked back through the yard toward the house, still listening and following the guidance as to when to step, when to pause, which direction to take, where to look.

While at the tree, I had heard a tiny chipping/gnawing sound from time to time a couple of yards from the base of the tree, and a few sounds much like a rabbit makes when moving in tall grass. It had occurred to me yesterday that I’ve never seen a rabbit on any of the land around our house in the few years we’ve lived here. Perhaps I will learn through this month of sits that they do share this land with us, after all.

As I came inside and moved quietly past the conversation and in to another room to check for ticks, I felt the confinement of the walls around me. How much of the world they block out! The sky, the breezes, the sounds of the night animals, the sense of weather and moon and sun…we lose them all by living in these houses, completely divorced from everything but humans and those things that human hands or machines have made. Is physical comfort, the consistency of temperature and humidity and space to store our hoards of belongings worth the loss of these gifts?