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.

Two long days of fun

...and I'm exhausted.  Will sit and write tomorrow.

Thank you for reading!

Day 16: Giving up the wheel

I rode on my first roller coaster in years the other day.  I'd remembered the excitement of them, but had forgotten the sheer thrill and terror.  As I rode, the metaphor for life shined through: we can grasp on to our situation, try to anticipate (often successfully) what is to come and how we will handle it.  But another way we can move through life is tuning in to what we're feeling right now, in this moment, and letting the rest come as it may.  On a moving roller coaster, this latter option can involve closing your eyes and just feeling the sensations of the ride, of course.  But I found that it was also possible to keep them open and sort of mentally step back from what my peripheral vision was telling me.  There was a way to allow for the possibility of change, despite the fact that I believed I knew what was just up ahead.

I've been moving towards following my guidance in day-to-day living rather than letting my personal plans and motives determine most of my choices.  This requires a release of control, an unfamiliar relaxing of my vision of how my day will go.  It requires me to accept potential change in every moment.  The roller coaster ride has been a helpful tool for this work, as I conjure up the feelings of speed, of hills and dropoffs, wild turns, all thrilling and all entirely outside of my control. 

The walk to my sit has become my daily practice in recognizing and following this inner guidance.  I almost always would prefer to walk the shortest, easiest path to my sit, to get it done first, and then explore and see what's new in the woods.  (There is always something new in the woods.)  But to let my inner vision/god/spirit/creator guide me, I loosen up my grip on this plan and watch attentively for that tug that lets me know I'm supposed to go this other way, or up the hill there, or around this stand of trees instead of straight down the path.  I sometimes find out what the reason was, and I sometimes don't.  Today was one of the times that I got to see immediately what the reason was, when I looked up to see this sight:

Now, there are two mounds of earth in this picture: dirt excavated during burrow-building.  The one on the right, the paler one, I am familiar with, having passed and peered into it many times.  (I take it to be a groundhog den.)  The one on the left was not there two days ago; the rust-colored soil is still dark from the moisture under the earth.


Here's how it looked standing beside the old den:

And looking down into the new hole, with my boot for scale to show how much soil was unearthed just in the past two days:

Happy riding, everyone!  Let me know what you find!

Halfway point! Day 15: squeak-squeak!

Today marks the halfway point of Wilderness Awareness School's 2013 "30-Day Sit Spot Challenge."

Five groundhogs successfully relocated from our garden a few weeks ago, I've been methodically reclaiming it from the weeds that had flourished in it during our time of despair.  Another satisfying morning of weeding today, handful after handful of big clumps of weeds, heavy lift of earth as the whole root ball comes up in my grasp.  Shaking the soil back down, tossing the plants into a mound to carry in armfuls to the compost pile.  And then: "squeak-squeak!"  A tiny, gray baby mouse comes blindly clambering out of my current handful.  I exclaim and apologize to it, my curious kids and mother come to see.  Then another tiny, fetus-like creature appears from the tangle of plants, then another, and another, making their awkward, infantile ways away from their nest, away from one another, out towards oblivion.

I pick them up gently and nestle them in my cupped hand, one after another after another, piling their squirming, velvety bodies upon one another as more appear from under the grass, from behind a clump of soil.  The kids point them out as they appear, "There's another one!  Can I hold one?  Can I pat them?"  They touch and wonder at the tiny things in my palm, and my mother shows them how the eyes are still sealed shut.

We find the perfect grass nest that I'd disturbed, see the tiny cave within that the babies had been curled in, hardly bigger than a golf ball for all nine of them.  I hold their dislodged nest and pour them, still squirming, back into it, cover it loosely with an abandoned mouse nest I'd discovered yesterday under a clay pot.  I hold the soft ball of grasses and babies in my hand as we work to clear a small area to rebuild their hiding place.  Half a minute later, we lift the top to see if the tiny things were real or just a sweet dream, and discover all of them perfectly still, perfectly sleeping, nestled in the grasses and in one another.

"Dere's da mudder!" My girl lifts us out of our reverie, pointing to a gray mouse boldly skirting the grasses near my knee, searching for her babies.  We place the covered nest on the ground, roof it with an inverted plant pot, and dig a channel under an edge so the mother can slip in easily.  Then we scurry away to the other side of the garden for the rest of the day.


In amidst all of the clearing, weeding, planting, watering, staking, pruning.  In amidst all the healthful productivity in the garden, the most precious spot is the remaining wild patch of grasses, and the clay pot with the nine tiny mice inside.

 

For the rest of the day, two little mice kept us company in the living room, snuggled together in their own little nest.  

"SQUEAK SQUEAK!"

Day 14

(This post is going to be short and sweet, as I don't have it in me to write much tonight.) 

Entering the woods this morning, I felt called to share the generous number of medicinal and edible plants I pass just on the short walk to my sit spot. 

 

Sweet fern.  Makes good tea.  Does NOT take the sting out of insect bites, as I originally wrote last night (teach me to write when I'm exhausted!).  Rather, if you rub the crushed leaves on your skin when you first go out, it will help repel the mosquitoes before they bite you! (Thanks Jas for the heads-up!)

White pine.  Needles (tea), male flowers, seeds, inner bark, small roots are all edible, and full of vitamin C.

Horsetail.  Used homeopathically for lots of conditions.

Beech tree.  Young leaves edible in spring.

Maples.  All maples give sweet sap, not just sugar maples!

Eastern hemlock.  Bark flour, needle tea (also very high in vitamin C).

Clovers.  Leaves and flowers edible.

Blackberries, of course!

And these are only the plants I'm familiar with; there are dozens more I pass that I simply don't recognize yet.

Day 12

2-2:30am

Roused ourselves to sit on the deck in the crisp, quiet night.  Boy snuggled on my lap, wrapped in his blanket.  A good, bright shooting star every five minutes or so, with whispered exclamations of "Did you see that one?!" 

It was worth it.


I will be in the city today and tomorrow and may not blog those days.  Happy sitting, everyone!

Day 11

Evening sit today, sunlight tickling branches and earth in a whole new way.  Lovely, sad light.  Do all humans who are blessed to live to old age feel this way, appreciation and sorrow and bittersweet love all at once, as they watch the sun setting?


(Update: Watched and watched the sky in the northeast tonight, but nary a shooting star.  Leaving the kiddos warm in their beds for now, will get up around 2am and see if there's more activity.  This site says the activity increases sharply after midnight.  Please comment if you see some!)  :-)

Day 10

 Spent my evening happily working on this birthday crown for a dear little fellow who's celebrating his second birthday tomorrow.  (Thanks, as always, to Deb Soule for the idea!)

The evening's work



The rest of the blog was written from bottom to top, so scroll down to the bottom now and work your way back up!  :-)

...and relaxing at my sit spot.

...feeling the soft pine needles, the crunchy oak leaves...

...weaving a path through the undergrowth, alert for thorns...

...and step into bare feet.  This one little change shifted my whole relationship to the forest as I walked quietly to my spot.  It was like I'd acquired a whole new sense, an ability to feel and read the forest floor through my body.  Immediately I felt the warm, damp earth under my left foot, the cool moss under my right...

 

I've been wearing shoes all month to protect my feet from the mosquitoes.  On my way through the woods today, it felt like it was time to shed them....