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.