Sixth evening: Arborial puppy ears!

7:30 pm

I'm finding that my senses are stronger and more easily accessible whenever I'm outside now, even when involved with my two little ones.  This is a change I experience every year during the Challenge, and it still feels revolutionary, like I am becoming a different person, a wildly alert animal-person.

I approached the pine from a different angle tonight and discovered a funny little tree, not three feet high, that appeared to be impersonating a beech.  It held the long, thin, scaly brown buds of a beech in winter, only they were massive, at about four inches long, longer by far than any I've beech buds I've ever seen.  As I examined it, it occurred to me to wonder whether I had *perhaps* let my beech identification rest on its laurels once the winter was over, and that I had never bothered to actually watch what those pretty little pointy buds turn into come springtime.  Bingo.

 This is the closest image I could find of the stage my beech is in now, from the Peterson Institute of Natural History website:

 

The more closed buds in this picture are more representative of what ours look like right now.  I nudged one open to peek inside when I was still puzzling over the type of tree, and was astonished to see the fragile hair-covered, wrinkly, newborn puppy ears inside!

Day five: Spider kites

1:30 pm

Sat on the porch while the babe napped and the boy watched a little show.

Sun snuggled warm in my lap at first, then disappeared with clouds and a breeze.  A wasp flicked its way around a dark patch on the porch railing - a spot of bird poop?  An old water splash from the children?  Groomed its antennae, its face, then flew off.

Robins, bluebirds, red-winged blackbird, the chipping somebody, and our resident tree swallows.

Freddy, one of our two male Indian Runner ducks, rose up out of the water in a way I haven't seen him do before, and made a new, very un-duck-like noise while doing it.  I can't remember how it sounded now, just that it was small and sounded vaguely like a rodent.  The drakes left the water, groomed their feathers, their bills clack-clacking against the shafts of their beautiful, strong wing feathers.

I went in to nurse the little one back down to sleep, peeked in at the boy, then back out to sit longer.

Yellow dandelion heads and gray seed heads adorn the grass, while heavy, billowy clouds interspersed with cirrus looked down from above.

Black flies around my face.  White butterflies, yellow butterflies.  What kinds?  What plants do their young feed on?

Spiders on the porch railing!  A light brown one, 1/8 inch long and 3/4 inch wide, flat as a drawing.  Skittish, hiding between the boards whenever I brought my face near.  Another, pearly-black like an ant, and carrying its body almost above its legs the way an ant does.  Whenever I leaned in to watch it, it turned to face me, walked quickly towards me if I didn't retreat, and raised its body up comically high and pointed its abdomen toward the sky, like nothing I've ever seen before.  It quickly relaxed when I pulled away from it a bit, and continued along the railing.  It spotted another spider, an equally small, roundish person with tiny black dots in an arc on its yellow abdomen, like eyes.  The black spider approached it swiftly, abdomen pointed to the sky again, pounced on it for a moment, then hopped right back off and continued on its way as the yellow spider ambled away, apparently unharmed.

The black spider then raised its abdomen toward the sky and released a thread into the wind, standing still as the wind caught the thread, carried it first one direction, then another, held it taught, and then dropped it flat down beside the spider.  It had never occurred to me before that this could happen.  It was like watching a spider's kite go down.

Fourth night: Generations in boughs

7:30pm

Got to sit in the tree tonight, my husband in with the little ones.

Overcast but bright sky, with mist hovering at the treetops.  Raindrops from today's many showers still clinging to branches here and there.  Walking past the apple tree, saw the scattered pink and white blossoms blessing its craggy bare branches.

The hens were unusually soggy from the rain, with mud up their legs from scratching in the newly-tilled garden.

Picked up pieces of trash under the tree's branches.  The pine I sit in grows in a small forest with several other grand pines, on land that other members of our family hold title to but share with us.  Over time, they have made use of this area in their own way.  Some trees have come down, several of  my pine's branches were cut to make room for a large portable garage that now sits about ten feet from the base of the tree, and in addition to the blackberry brambles, an off-duty snowplow now rests directly under the branch I sit on.  The original forest floor under half of my tree has been covered with fill and gravel that were brought in to level out the land for the portable garage.  This forest that is precious and sacred to me is simply usable land for others.  I fret sometimes to think that they may at some point find it necessary to cut off the branch I sit on, but I am reluctant to divulge my secret spot to them.  I covet the privacy I can eke out, living in such proximity to so many of...well...us.

Robins were cheeriup, cheerio'ing tonight.  Mourning doves changed branches above me as I approached the tree, but didn't fly away when I ascended.  A few minutes later, other doves cooed from across the yard. Someone else sang a chippy song, I don't know who.

The air was still during my sit, but for one lone breeze that timidly crept through the pine, sending a few branches swaying.  Water dripped from the branches now and then, and a few raindrops gleamed as they clung to the elbows of the twigs.

A four-wheeler buzzed through the forest on the other side of the street. 

There is a little maple whose growth I have been witnessing over the past few springs during the Sit Spot Challenge.  One of its limbs extends directly into the center of my pine's seven great trunks, reaching for the sunlight it knows is beyond them.  This tender little branch, no thicker than my pinky, is sporting new little shoots a couple of inches long now, adorned in half-dollar-sized maple leaves, their surfaces all wrinkly and delicate as a newborn baby's skin.  It is like a young parent, someone's teenaged child who has miraculously transformed into a parent, with its own little universe of leaves it has been nurturing.  And the limb this teenager grows from?  A grandparent now?

Trees are an embodiment of hundreds of living generations, each bough begetting the next generation, and so on.  So much like us animals in their regeneration, and yet the trees, the blessed trees, they get to stick around for the young ones!  They get to be there for their grandchildren, their great-grand-children, their many-times-over great grandchildren.  The grand-folk of every past generation remain, supporting the young.

Does this account for the generosity, the wisdom of trees?  For the gifts they offer us in the form of comfort and guidance when we let go, when we lean back on their rough bark and just listen?

I was lost in thought for much of my sit today, and found, on my way back across the yard to the house, that a sense of panic was rising in my throat.  I had not settled into the out-of-doors yet, had not tasted the sweetness of listening/smelling/sensing/seeing all of the delicacies that the evening had to offer, and I felt desperate to do so.  I watched this feeling.  I wrote in an earlier post that I have become familiar with many of my emotions and reactions during my sits, but this was a new one.  There are always many times during Sit Spot Challenges when I barely manage to be aware for one full minute during my 20-minute sits, but I don't remember ever having this keen a reaction. 

Third night: Short posting

10:30pm

Couldn't go to my sit spot tonight so sat on porch again.

Peepers calling, their thin, drawn-out violin note.  No word from the "ree....ree...." frog, who was still calling at 8 tonight when I put the chickens in.

Coolness of the breeze seemed to push against me.

Fighting a cold, eager to go in and go to bed.  After a while, I caught myself thinking that the time would go by faster if I just shut myself down and didn't try to pay attention to anything going on outside.  Fantastic games our minds play.

Second night: Diligence and discomfort

Sat in my tree tonight, for the first time in months.  It's a great white pine out in the small forest behind our house, just uphill from our chicken coop.  It's been my sit spot for the five years I've been sitting during the challenge - first sitting beside its trunk, then moving up into its branches.

Tonight, I had made a particularly difficult decision regarding a friend of mine immediately before my sit.  A decision that may hurt my friend somewhat but that will ultimately be more respectful of our friendship.  As I walked outside, my hair was up in two buns, and the cold air chilled my exposed neck.  It felt appropriate, the taughtness of my hair pulled into the buns, the mild discomfort of the temperature: When we  keep ourselves reined in in our attempt to live respectfully toward one another and toward the earth, there is a necessary tension about it.  This tension, this firmness, is required to keep ourselves from simply slacking off and indulging ourselves at every turn.  There is a discomfort about it that keeps us awake, alert, on guard.  One of my favorite gifts from Eckhart Tolle, his advice to "Be the ever-alert guardian of your inner space," encourages me to accept this balance between diligence and discomfort, helps keep me facing toward the direction I want to travel.

Robins, ever alert themselves and insistent tonight in their calls, shouted throughout a tree near me, then flew off to other trees across the clearing.  Traffic sounds, peepers, and a frog that I've been thinking was a wood frog but whose call doesn't match the recordings I've found on the web.  "Reeee!....Reeeee!"

The tree I sat in was so still, so motionless compared to the commotion and bulkiness of the thoughts in my head. 

I'm finding during this year's challenge that I've come to know myself better from these sits; there is a cumulative knowledge base about myself that I've unwittingly been earning during all these moments spent sitting.  When I am lost in thought and am struggling to pull my attention back to the moment, I am familiar with all of the nuances of that struggle.  I'm familiar with the patterns of my thinking, of my awareness, of my intuition.  This sounds so simple on paper, and yet what complexities are brought to light, what layers upon layers of self-knowledge we gain in our quiet moments.

Though I only spend a month on it out of every year, the limb I sit on might as well be a couch for how comfortable it has become to me, how comforting and familiar.  Even today, after so long a hiatus, I felt immediately at home when I arrived there despite how much growth has gone on since my last sit.  Life has continued to flow around and within everything at my sit spot in every moment that I have been away. 

First night: Mail on the wind

Once again, I join hundreds of others in Wilderness Awareness School's Annual 30-Day Sit Spot Challenge.  This challenge is designed to encourage folks to move part of their day out into nature by sitting in one spot outside for at least 20 minutes each day for a month, reawakening our awareness of and connection to our natural world.  This will be my fifth annual Sit Spot Challenge, a precious and difficult rite of spring for me.

Night sit.  Wrapped in a blanket on the porch, standing in a chill drizzle.  Trained my ears in each direction in turn, opening my awareness to the night.  The four ducks we keep talked quietly to each other in the darkened pond.  The scattered remnants of spring peeper choruses emanated from nearby wetlands.  A steady faucet of rain spilling from the gutter, heavy and light dripping patterns playing on the wood of the porch.  Cars buzzing past on the wet road.

My mind jumped intermittently from this auditory task to thoughts of family matters and yard work that needs doing.  Upon completing the task, I returned to my body to find it standing stock still in the cool air.

The light, delectable scent of wood smoke drifted by.  Mail from the wind.

My hearing sharpened at times, as though my ears had suddenly expanded to the size of saucepans, picking up every sound from one direction or another.  I envisioned mouse ears, deer ears, lending keen hearing to their owners.  These creatures have their hearing, others their swiftness, their wings, their sharp vision, their sense of smell.  Each creature seems to claim a particular strength.  But we humans?  Hearing, sight, speed, smell?  Indeed, we are a little heavy on the mental side of things, but in terms of our physical sensing of the natural world, our physical activity within it, we seem ill-equipped compared to everyone else, lacking any one main strength.

The blanket warmed my shoulders, my legs.  My rain boots let the cold in to my ankles and feet. 

After twenty minutes, I fox-walked into the cave-like entryway of my house, strangely still and muted after the expansiveness, the liveliness, of the outdoors. 

Shaken and Released

I got sick this week, and it put me face-to-face with that darned companion, mortality. 

I woke up in the wee hours of the morning on Monday with terrible chills and a headache.  Up for an hour, back to sleep, back up a few hours later to throw up and then collapse onto a quilt on the living room floor, where I spent the rest of the day.  (I was so focused on just existing that it didn't occur to me to return to the bed.)  My husband quickly realized that I was not about to make breakfast for our children, so he called out from work and left the kids with their nana during the times he came home to check on me. 

It turned out I had a bacterial infection.  I had a fever, chills all day, a constant headache, every joint ached and part of my body throbbed with pain from the infection.  I was so weak that it was a terrific strain to even sit up, and I ate the soup he fixed me with my chin barely off the floor, just high enough so the spoon could clear the rim of the bowl.  I had gone from the version of myself where I'm 35, lively, always doing things and interacting with people all day, always planning on the future, to a new, unfamiliar version of myself in which I'm maybe 82, quite sickly, quite alone, not caring much about anything in the world other than water and a little food because I simply didn't have the energy to care.  Being sick showed me what illness can do to a person's vitality.  It's not just about the pain; it's about the energy left over after you've dealt with the pain, with the illness.  There has to be some liveliness left if we want to take enjoyment in the world, and if there's none left, there's not much of us left.  Then we're just a mind operating a body coping with illness, or at least that's all that was left of me. 

At one point, I got myself with great effort into the kitchen for a glass of water and a straw to drink it out of.  I remember my hands fumbling through the cabinet, and cursing the way I had to bend my aching wrist to get at them behind the olive oil, where I've never realized it's any effort to get at them.  I suddenly saw, instead of me, an elder in a worn nightgown, living alone in this state.  Alone and just making it through her days, day after day, so sapped by illness that she had no energy left to take interest in any of the beauty of the world, or children, or birds, or the sky.  Just staying alive, that's all.  Just carrying on, with no spark, nothing treasured except maybe a comfortable place to sit and a warm meal.  No striving except towards physical comfort from some source.  I don't remember feeling sorry for myself as I saw that I was like this woman I envisioned, I simply saw it.  There was no energy to be sad.  I just saw. 

During their visit to see me that first day, my little girl smiled over her shoulder at me as she practiced standing up while holding on to a chair.  My boy told me in his usual jubilant manner about what he had done at Nana's house and then showed off his wonderful Halloween costume for me, all smiles, before going trick-or-treating with his father.  For my part, I did my best to turn my head and aching eyes all the way over to where they were, which was a true challenge, as unreal as it sounds to me now.  I loved them and wanted the best for them as much as I always do, but it was a detached kind of love.  Lying there, sick as I was, it was a relief when my husband took them away so I didn't have to expend energy paying attention to them and trying to return their smiles.  All of this was exhausting.  I could love them from afar.  (I recognize that this post reflects a two-day illness; I have no idea how I would have felt after a week of only short daily visits from them.  I like to think that my heart would have broken.)

I've been sick before, but always - always - from illnesses my body could reliably recover from on its own: colds, flu, chicken pox, etc.  The one that got me this week held on with force into the second day, which is the point at which patients are advised to go on antibiotics, if they aren't already.  It's not that I would have died without the medicine, but if I had been fighting that case of that illness without access to any medicine, it could have gotten very ugly, requiring surgical drainage, removal of abscess, etc.  Not things my body can do on its own.

And that was the disturbing part.  That was the part that shook me from my snug little nook up in the land of Someday I Might Be Old and Maybe Need A Little Medicine...Maybe, down to the swamp where We Are All Vulnerable All of the Time And If It Doesn't Show, We're Just Lucky.