Snow

First sit in the snow this season. 

View down to the river from my sit.  I love the three layers of white.

Fox tracks (?), coming and going.

The wind-blown snow over the ice made galaxies, storm systems...

View upstream.

My summer swim hole.

Animals have been traversing the ice already, even though the river isn't fully frozen over yet.

Flames

It is said that we all get a chance to take a truthful look at ourselves as our death approaches.  That all the layers of doubt and fear and pretense and greed peel away in that moment, and we are left seeing the creature we were born as, the creature buried under a lifetime's accumulation of stories about ourselves.

As I stoked the fire in our woodstove tonight, I rested for a moment with the door ajar, the flames spellbinding in their dancing life.  I'd only placed that log in a few moments before, setting it on the embers, but already it was in full flame, brown wood giving rise to light and life.  It seemed the layers of growth in the wood were being pulled, one by one, into another form.  The certainty of the wood, the expectation of its appearence, transforming into an otherworldly creation, sacredness.

What if we start the changes now?  What if, instead of waiting until we can't stand it any longer, or until we are looking death in the eye, what if we peel those layers off now?  Take a deep breath and let go, and look inward, and accept what we see there.  And on, and on. 

Crossing

Walked the river this morning.  Cool drizzle speckled the water, clouds hung low over everything.

Took a momentous step today, beginning to remove old, heavy weight that has hung on me for years. As I moved through the woods, the river offered itself as a cleansing, a marking of the day.  

Boots off and slung over my shoulder, I rolled up my pants and waded in.  Soft, muddy clay swallowed my feet, my ankles.  It seemed I would sink forever, but eventually I sensed solid ground, and could move forward.  Chilled water surrounded my legs, and I made my slow journey to the middle of the river, dipping almost to my waist and soaking my pants before I reached the rise of deposited sediment in the center, the slowest part of the river.   As I walked downstream on this sunken sandbar, barely feeling the pull of the gentle current on my calves now, the ripples from my legs radiated out in all directions.  I saw them lapping the shores all around me, my movements touching everything I passed.  Some ripples returned at odd angles, having met with a rock or fallen tree which sent its own message back in reply.

The forest echoes and articulates so many of our human feelings in its endless appearances.  This impossible tangle of tree roots on the bank, like the tortuous and impenetrable intertwining of our lives with others.

  Exploring on the far shore, I found a stand of peculiar mushrooms I didn't recognize.  They felt to me like the potent medicine we can find when we walk authentically.  Deadly, and miraculous, all at once.

Holding

Back into my forest after many days away.  Felt the same deep sadness in the woods as on my last visit.

As I rested against a hemlock, a spiderweb on a nearby tree wafted slowly back and forth in the breeze, in and out of the afternoon sunlight.  Shining, then invisible, then shining again.

The web looked at once so whispy and so self-assured against the massive trunk of the tree: the ephemeral anchored to the eternal.

The Gathering

Gathered last weekend with friends old and new to share the ancient, more gentle ways of living on the earth.  So many delicious moments to savor, so many precious new friends in my life.  How swiftly we can work our way into one another's hearts when we gather in shared passion, shared playfulness, shared devotion to this earth.

Making a berry basket for my littles under the tutelage of a sweet old friend.

 My girl gave the unfinished basket a test run with the local autumn olive berries.

My boy's annual archery fix.  Each time he and the other archers would go to gather their arrows from the target range together, he walked purposefully beside them rather than running ahead to find his arrows, which is his wont.  Shoulders squared, chest up, it was clearly so nourishing to him to be participating directly with the adults. 

Dolly's makeover while sitting around the breakfast fire.

My bow drill set, getting some much needed use.

Got an ember going with the friction of the spindle on the fireboard:

Preparing to tuck the ember into the tinder bundle:

Covering the ember with the tinder bundle and...

...flipping the whole thing over so the ember falls inside in one piece.

Slowly closing the tinder bundle around the ember to feed it.  Then lifted it up to blow gently on it.

And we have fire!

30-Day Sit Spot Challenge complete! (Day 31)

Back home and back to sitting in my beloved woods.  Pictures and remarks are from the past few days.

Thoreau's Walden Pond cooled me and my family a few days ago:

The children and I inherited a pile of sticks and a dug-out inlet from the last children to play at our section of beach, and we decided to fashion them into a makeshift fish weir. 

One or two of us would chase the school of minnows along the bank toward the weir while another stood guard at the outer edge of the sticks, channeling the fish toward the inlet.  My boy stood guard at the opening of the inlet, placing the thicker sticks and rock across it to trap them once the fish run was complete.  It took us a few passes, but we ended in success: two tiny minnows trapped in the inlet!  When we caught them, my mother, always up for fun, thanked the children for having caught "dinner." 

Two plants I didn't recognize, growing on the banks of Walden.  I've come to know the plants and geography of my own woods so well that now when I'm in another place and I come across plants I don't know, I feel as though I'm traveling abroad.

Another Kamana Sit Spot Challenge come to a close, and once again I feel grateful for the place the program and this Challenge hold in my life.  Knowing that other folks the world over have committed to sit regularly in their own places on the earth is so inspiring to me, and helps me to re-establish my own sitting routine each year, right when I need it most.

Regular sits strengthen my connection to my own self, they help me to regain the sacred habit of listening with all my senses to the natural world.  They reacquaint me with the communities of plants and animals around me, remind me playfully that my body is made to withstand a greater variety of weather (and biting insects) than I am accustomed to venturing out in.

They remind me of my place and value on this earth. 

Day 29: Away, floating

Visiting family in the city.  I've been choosing not to take time to myself to sit or journal here, in exchange for a few more moments with those I love.  Feel my connection to the earth and my own self loosening, the firm rope of my groundedness fraying and thinning, so that I am floating out a bit above the earth, out of myself.

Will return to sitting and writing when I return home this weekend.

Day 25: Flight

My boy's latest pet, Spikey the Mourning Cloak caterpillar...

...who went into its "J" form on August 7th...

...and shed its skin to reveal its chrysalis on August 8th...

...emerged last Thursday, after 14 days in the chrysalis! 

After its wings had filled out and it had fluttered a few inches away from its chrysalis in the huge aquarium, we gave it a couple of hours to get acquainted with its new body, then I came to gather it up and bring it outside with my boy.   But sadly, every indication was that it had died: it was sitting still as stone against the side of the tank, most of its feet just hanging in the air.  As I picked it up, it simply fell over in my hand.  My husband urged us to give it a bit more time, perhaps it was still settling in to its new body.

We set in back in the tank and noticed a bit later that it had moved to a different location - it was alive!  We tried to release it again some time later, with nearly the same result as before, but we were determined to let it go this time.  My boy carried the languid thing gently outside, preparing to place it on some sheltered leaf somewhere.  But the instant the butterfly was outside and felt the sunlight, it righted itself and disappeared from his hand.  We looked up just in time to see it fly over the house, straight towards the sun.

It was like it had risen from the dead once it was given what it needed: freedom.  We were taken completely by surprise, thrilled that it was healthy, awed by its shift from stupor to pure life.  May we all be so blessed to recognize and respond when we are given what we truly need!


This was the boy's project a few days ago: hazelnuts piled into a dear little toy train set a relative made for him.  The shelled hazelnuts in the gray train car are dinosaur eggs, and the ones still in shell in the blue car are food for the dinosaurs once they hatch.

Wandered the woods near my father's this weekend. The cold nights have been calling to the leaves:

 

A spider's gossamer decorations, catching the sunlight:

Sumac out behind our house.  I believe the reds and yellows are the work of the stinkbug in the lower right corner.

For a "weed tree," sumac is astonishingly delicate:

During my sit today, I came upon a squirrel bandying about in the canopy of a beech tree, sending a continuous rain of beech nuts and husks down.  It kept it up during the twenty minutes I spent under the tree.

It was too active to actually be consuming the nuts, and I wondered whether it was simply harvesting them by letting them fall to the earth, then planning to come collect them later. 

The river is very low, with rain finally forecast for tonight and tomorrow.  There was a heaviness about the woods today, and I wondered whether it was the plants' response to the dryness.

Day 22: Prayer in the Forest

(An advertising program seems to have weaseled its way into my blog, highlighting certain words and showing ads if you run the mouse over them.  I'm working to clear it out as quickly as I can.)

Wandering towards my sit spot today, I felt the familiar pull to drop my own plans and follow the quiet urging from nature, from my soul, from god, from spirit.  I was guided to kneel down where I was on the side of the hill,to reach out ahead of me and gather in small handfuls of soil, dried leaves, small sticks, every part of the earth that lay before me.

It is the seeming randomness of the actions I'm guided to do that make them easy to dismiss, "What possible reason is there for me to do that?"  But I've been listening lately, and following, and today I gathered up the earth in my hands.  I lifted my hands up high in front of me, and the sunlight filtering through the trees made the brown leaves in my hand glow.  And a prayer came: for my sister's friend who died of cancer just last week, leaving her two young children in this life.  And a prayer for my mother's vibrant, strong young friend who is now working hard to reclaim her health from the cancer she just learned about in her own body.

The leaves, the trees, the earth, all the microflora and microfauna contained in the small cluster in my hands, all joined in the prayer for these two women, for their families, and the energy in the forest echoed with the strength of the prayer.

We always have the choice: heed our guidance or dismiss it.

After the prayer felt complete, I sprinkled everything back on the earth before me, and felt that I should wash my hands in the river, let the dust of the soil go into the river.

I made my way down to the water, glad to have put my suit on before going out to my sit, and left my clothes on the riverbank.  Feet wet, legs wet, and down went my hands into the fresh, cool water.  I swirled my hands around and the dust plumed out from them, then trailed away slowly with the current, carrying the prayers onward, down, down the river.  Seeing the prayers join the river in this way, seeing the river join in the prayers, I came to know, to feel in my blood, how ancient this river is.  How ancient the communities of plants, trees, animals, birds, insects are that I walk past every day.

 It's so easy to let myself believe that everything on this earth is as temporary as my own life is.  But there in the water, I was coaxed into facing the reality that this forest and river are eternal, and that I am only a passing moment in its existence.  In only a couple of centuries, I will be gone, every creature I've ever met in this life will be gone, most of the plants and trees that shelter me, feed me, give me medicine, will have fallen onto the earth, become the earth.  The insects skimming the water's surface today, the tiny fish tickling my feet, the crayfish under the rock, they will all be gone, passed into the realm of those-who-came-before.

But all the life of the forest will remain, the descendents of each kind of creature and plant will populate it, and it will, with any luck, look much like it does now.  Our passing will not be noticed, no more than any of the other passings that occur in the forest every day. 

As I stood in the river, soaking in the realization of my utter insignificance to this place I cherish, a dragonfly darted up to me.  She was a big one, the kind I always wish would land on me but never yet has.  She perched on my shoulder for an instant, then buzzed to my back, where I felt a sharp pinch.  I plunged down into the water to send her off, and she darted to the shore, where she danced about from surface to surface, curling her long abdomen down to touch each thing she'd landed on.  She was laying eggs.

Day 19: Sharing the Sit

My boy, now 5 1/2 years, kept me company on my sit for the first time today.  He was thrilled to get to come along to "Mumma's sit," and was enthralled by nearly everything he saw in the woods, as is usual when we take walks.  Today was extra special, because his father was putting the girl down for her nap, so he was able to have my (rare) undivided attention.


As we entered the woods, we came upon the first Solomon's Seal I've found in our woods, so I'm adding it to my growing list of edible and medicinal plants that grow on the path to my sit spot.  Its roots are edible, and are considered anti-inflammatory and astringent, used to treat indigestion, lung ailments, poor sleep, coughs, skin problems, arthritis. 

 For much of our sit, my son explored the "big pile of dirt near a hole" that I wrote about two days ago.  He was far more interested in playing with the fine orange dirt than he was in the animal hole.  It wasn't until telling his Dada about our explorations today that he made the connection that it wasn't simply coincidence that the Big Pile of Dirt was near a hole; that it had, in fact, been dug out of the hole!

 He walked around as I sat, taking pictures of the myriad things that interested him.

The Big Pile of Dirt, from his vantage point:

That Neat Thing Leaning Against a Tree:

This is a little spot he cleared near my sit, using some of the rocks he collected as he walked around.  He'd spent some time mixing the orange soil from the animal hole with the brown loam of my sit.  He piled the rocks up and spread the soil out flat when he was done:

After our twenty minutes, we headed down to the water.

We sat by the river for a long time, quietly sharing all the fascinating things we noticed.  The natural world captivates him the same way it affects me.  He echoed the feeling I have at nearly every sit when he said, "Can we stay down here for a long, long time?"  It was deeply satisfying to see so clearly how much he loves this earth.

More photos by the boy:

His view of the river before us:

He noticed how the fallen trees across the river formed a perfect arrowhead with their reflections, and took this picture in order to show it to me, as I had never noticed it before:

He liked the distinctness of the dry and wet areas of this rock near us:

He kept remarking on "that beautiful thing" floating slowly down the river.  They were all the early-changing leaves from trees upstream, already showing their orange, yellow, green, brown.  As we later waded in the water and he was able to pick one up, he said, upon examining it closely, "It makes me think of all different leaves all mixed together into one leaf."

One thing perplexed me during our visit to the river:  The two pictures that follow are of our feet, standing on the same rock, with a time lapse of about a half hour between the two pictures.  The entire rock was covered by about 1/4 inch of water when we first stood on it:

After wading, as we prepared to head uphill, we found the water level on the rock (and everything else) to have dropped by about 1/2 inch!  

It was a warm day, about 75 degrees, but it would surprise me if so much evaporation takes place in such a short period of time.  I'm planning to contact the local volunteers who watch the health of the area's waterways to ask them if there was dam activity today, or if they know if the dramatic drop in water level could simply be attributed to evaporation.

He was delighted to discover the clay of the riverbanks, and filled a found jar with it to bring uphill.  We donned it on our face and arms, and had our first camouflage play, hiding in the bushes and jumping out at my girl and husband when they came to meet us, to the enjoyment of all.  We are all looking forward to many more camouflage adventures.