Day 3

Stole away just long enough to do my 20 minute sit, and left the camera at home. 

The neighbor whose land abuts my sit spot woods (and whom I have yet to meet) was cutting a fallen pine into firewood, and I timed the crunching of my boots through the dry oak and maple leaves to match the chainsaw's buzzing, to ensure my privacy.  (My sit spot is just beyond the slope from his yard, so that he and I were out of view but within earshot of each other.)  This is the first time he's been outside during my sit, and I wanted to use my sacred 20 minutes for sitting rather than for introductions.

The mosquito paparazzi welcomed me when I sat beneath my hemlock tree, and the march of daddy-long-legs, which I've been witnessing for days now, continued up the hillside.  There are generally at least four or five of them within reach at a given time, all throughout the forest, and all heading uphill.  Though I was sitting quite still, they all assiduously marched around me rather than climbing up and over me, as I kept expecting them to. 

As I sat today, two of them locked legs next to me and drew their bodies in close together, though not actually touching.  One of them then spun off into the frenzied whirling that daddy-long-legs tend to do when their webs are disturbed.  The other endured this for a few seconds, then swiftly disengaged and fled down the hillside.  The other, apparently triumphant, continued on its march uphill. 

My Audubon Field Guide to Insects and Spiders asserts that "On cool afternoons, adults often climb trees or sides of buildings, seemingly to benefit from residual heat of the sun."  I wouldn't consider the recent 70+ degree days to be cool, but perhaps they do, and have been marching uphill to escape the river's cooling effect on their air.

I continued sitting silent and still, observing the slow movement of the bubbles on the surface of the river.  As I sat there, the sun glinted off the water and a breeze moved over the treetops boldly, and I felt suddenly as though the apparent health of this river and these woods had become representative of the state of the whole earth.  It was as though every place on the earth was in its natural state, healthy and whole, free to follow its own instructions.  The most profound peace surrounded me in that moment, as though I were a member of a species who lived consciously and respectfully in accordance with nature, as I believe we can.

I am no longer the idealist I was as a young adult, and I recognize and am profoundly grateful for the seemingly limitless ways humans have invented to keep ourselves better fed, better sheltered,  healthier, and physically safer, among other astonishing advances.  But I also see and feel keenly the impacts some of these advances have had on our earth.  In this one moment of peace this afternoon, it felt as though I was transported back, or forward, to a time when the earth generated its own balance and we humans fell into alignment with it, vibrantly and courageously, at peace with our place in the universe at last.  I have never before felt the quality of peace that I did sitting there today.