I wake this summer Monday morning aware of unfolding. The fog is in and I see a tinge of pink. It will lift early today, dissipate, or perhaps it is that it unfolds as I intend to allow today.

I scan through this living that appears to be mine though it expands out to involve watering plants and petting, feeding, and kissing kitties and Steve. Words and purrs are shared. Coffee grown far away moves through me, an awakening lake. My small and intimate sensory awareness group meets this morning on Zoom and I look at notes from the past to prepare. I open doors. What is mine to share?

I come to words by Dawn Prince-Hughes, a woman with Aspergers. In her struggle to understand human communication, she began to sit outside the window of the enclosure for the silverback gorillas at the Seattle zoo.  One day she arrived upset. Congo, a silverback male gorilla noticed and rushed to the window. He motioned her to put her head on his shoulder. They touched through the glass.   They felt the glass as fluid.

She says: 

I probably stayed with him like that, with my head on his shoulder, for 30 minutes or so. I think it was probably the first time I was genuinely comforted by another person. Congo really set the standard for what social interactions should be like between me and another living being. You just can’t worry about looking like a fool. You can’t worry about getting hurt. You can’t worry about whether you’re right or not. It just boils down to wanting to be connected at all costs, at all risks. I no longer wanted to allow the permeability of my spirit to seek smaller and smaller shelters. It requires a completely open heart. I felt like I found a way to go home through the glass. — Dawn Prince-Hughes

I sit with that this morning, feeling my heart open through all barriers, a flower in full bloom, nestled with other hearts, connected at the root.

The fog offers mist to thoughts and skin.

Today I met with a friend who read my latest book “Airing Out the Fairy Tale” straight through, and now reads it again, pausing at each line, pausing and meditating.

She’s not the first to say that is her experience, which I find gratifying as the book is meant to be a book of meditation, not just search, and even what might be perceived as privilege to venture.

Grateful, I light a candle and sit in the flickering light of support and trust. Asking, we receive, and this I’m continually shown and believe.

There is so much love, beauty, compassion, and connection in this world that it comforts, exhilarates, and lifts me.  I’ve seen a multitude of positive changes in my lifetime. I focus there.

I wake this morning, rested and calm, rise and see the decks and yard are wet with mist from fog.  I feed Tiger and Bella, make a cup of coffee and take that first, fragrant sip. Interdependence flows through me as I savor all that is required to partake in that wakening sip.

I read Ilhan Omar’s response to Trump..

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

-Maya Angelou

Yes, still, like air, we’ll rise, and yet, our nervous system are branched and twined like the roots of a tree.  Mine feel a little shaky this morning. How is anyone allowed to spout hate as he does, and why does he want to?

“Shiver my timbers” by Popeye the Sailor Man comes to mind.  It’s used to express “shock, surprise, or annoyance”. It’s not enough to say my timbers are shaking this morning as I try to balance knowing love, love, love, is the answer and the only way to survive and thrive, and yes, “still, like air”, we rise.

The dharma talk by Jane yesterday was on trees.  I’ve always thought I’d like to be a tree, just stand rooted, receiving nutrients and information from the ground and air, receiving the changing air, but after Jane spoke, and we went outside to root, I felt that yes, I like stillness, and I also like movement.  I moved my feet up and down and side to side. I’m not a tree.

We came back into the church and divided into groups of three to discuss our relationship with trees.

One woman prefers the city and has no relationship with trees.  The other loves to walk barefoot to her cabin in the woods. I shared my love of trees and a time when a tree physically reached out to comfort me.

I was sitting on our front step crying.  At Scout-a-rama a few years before, our sons had each received a redwood sprout about six inches tall.  Planted in one pot and then a bigger one, these sprouts had continued to grow until one was about six feet tall and next to the step.  As I cried, I felt a branch lean in and stroke my back. Empathy from a tree – yes!

It’s why I thought of starting a business where neighbors would gather before a tree is cut.  We’ve had to remove about twenty trees from our property over the years. They became diseased and had to go and each time it’s a loss, and certainly a change. Recently we lost an oak to disease. Our other oaks have now been given the equivalent of immunotherapy to boost their resistance so they can fight off the disease. Sometimes I feel the information between them disseminating through their roots. We share relationship, trees and me.

Trees absorb water and like a fountain spray it in the air.  When some of our huge pines had to come out, suddenly our basement was flooding with water. We had to put in a French drain.  I read that planting trees could solve the problems of climate change, but where I live the fear of fire means people are cutting down trees.  As in everything, balance is required.

I was also struck yesterday by Jane’s point that a mango will never grow on an oak tree.  That image gives me permission to settle more firmly into the ground I am.

After the talk, Karen, Jane, and I went to Limantour Beach, and saw two seals, and multitudes of pelicans and gulls. As we walked, we heard, though didn’t see, the Snowy Plover that are nesting and protected right now. After awhile, we found a sheltered place in the dunes to sit. 

One woman still has her mother’s ashes. Her mother never learned to swim but loved to watch the ocean waves. Where would her ashes find comfort now? It seems a topic of conversation these days – ashes. We decide to do a field trip to Fernwood Cemetery located near where I live. They offer options. Jane thinks she would like a place people could visit. I feel my brother’s ashes are happily galloping in the ocean. I think I want a variety of places but especially that. As much as I think of being a tree, I like fluidity.

Where we sat, a group of children came and played nearby.  As I sit here now, aware of grasses and trees, rocks, and sand, life moving through fingers and bones, I pray we protect our children, all children, every child on the planet, in every way we can, and that includes caring for grasses and trees.

In her talk, Jane suggested we each choose a quality we want to manifest right now. My quality is Peace!

I rise at 4:45.  Tiger wants to go out.  All is silent, no wind, only a wrap of fog.  Light comes and birds begin to call and the boom of the fog horn pours through.  

I’m on my way to Muir Beach, then up the coast to Pt. Reyes Station for a dharma talk on trees and then a walk on the beach with two friends.

This moment seems a place to put words in a bin and roll them to the curb.

Silence rolls through my bones.  Fog rests, and even as I type, it moves, and the ridge begins to reveal. I see another layer of trees.

The Mill Valley marsh near where I live was saved because the endangered Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse lives here.  I was strolling along the marsh today enjoying the water, egrets, and plants: cordgrass, saltgrass and pickleweed when my friend Will bicycled up.  Will was born here almost fifty years ago and equals Google in his array of knowledge.   

I thought I knew the area as regards our native people, the Coast Miwok, but today I learn I’m near a  midden where Chief Marin lived. The discarded clam shells are known to be from his time because that particular variety of clam no longer exists here in the bay.  Will tells me where to find the midden and I do.  

I also learn that the Army Corps of Engineers is looking into solutions for the problem of flooding that’s occurring because of climate change.  The proposal is to remove concrete walls and replace them with nature’s filtering system – cordgrass, pickleweed, and saltgrass. That will give us 50 to 100 years.

I love that nature gives us answers we need.  She’s shining brightly today, and inside and out, I refresh on finding what I need right here where I live.