Nature – Cathy's Blog!

Posted on May 11, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Connection

In May, 2022, I read about Dawn Prince-Hughes who has Aspergers. In wanting to understand human communication, she began sitting outside the window of the enclosure for the silverback gorillas at the Seattle zoo. One day when she arrived upset, Congo, a silverback male gorilla noticed and rushed to the window. He motioned to her to put her head on his shoulder. They touched through the glass and felt the glass as fluid.

She writes: 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 human 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.

Posted on May 7, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Now

I return to a book by Jeanne Achterberg, Woman as Healer. Civilizations decline when they devalue women. From prehistoric times to the present, there’s been peace, growth, and prosperity when women were honored and revered for their role as healers and creators, as essential beings in this world we share. When they were held down, dishonored, and demeaned, there was war.

And here we are, again.

A Great Blue Heron stands stately by the path!

Posted on May 4, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Silence

In Erling Kagge’s book, Silence: In the Age of Noise, he writes of “how it feels good to share a joy”. He also writes of how words can interfere.

From the book:

Early one morning the war hero Claus Helberg, who later became a respected guide in Norway’s mountain region, led a group out from Finsehytta, a Norwegian mountain cabin.

“The summer light was returning, winter had released its hold, and new colours were emerging everywhere. The conditions were fantastic, and instead of commenting on it he began the hike by handing out slips of paper to each of the participants on which was written: “Yes, it is totally amazing.”

When the pandemic began we rarely drove and didn’t drive one of our cars which sat outside. The battery died. When we opened the hood to put in a new battery, we discovered this beautiful nest.

Posted on April 26, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Beauty and Art Around Us

On Friday I was at Cornerstone gardens in Sonoma and Saturday at the Las Gallinas Reclamation ponds in San Rafael. I offer a taste through photos.

Posted on April 22, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Clouds

I’m enamored with clouds as I consider the blue sky that’s always with us, and what floats and moves above, around, and through us.

In the book Where’d You go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, I read her description of the sky and clouds in Seattle.

“The sky in Seattle is so low, it felt like God had lowered a silk parachute over us. Every feeling I ever knew was up in that sky. Twinkling joyous sunlight; airy, giggling cloud wisps; blinding columns of sun. Orbs of gold, pink, flesh, utterly cheesy in their luminosity. Gigantic puffy clouds, welcoming, forgiving, repeating infinitely across the horizon as if between mirrors; and slices of rain, pounding wet misery in the distance now, but soon on us, and in another part of the sky, a black stain, rainless.”

And on she goes … may we each do the same as we observe and reflect on movement above, around, in, through, and connecting us.

Posted on March 26, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Awareness

I’m outside on these warm nights enjoying the new moon increasing and the sparkling stars. I’m with Rilke.

Yes — the springtime needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it.

Mark Bittner and his parrot friends inspired the 2003 documentary, “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill”. If you want to feel the beauty he understood and felt, watch him on YouTube. I suggest you begin with All Life is One Whole. He died peacefully in his sleep with two dogs at his side. He was 74.

Posted on March 21, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

It’s Spring!

I’m struck by the flowers blooming along the path into the library. The rise seems so effortless. I’m with these words of Bruce Lee from his book, Be Water, My Friend.

Who is there that can make muddy waters clear? But if allowed to remain still, it will become clear of itself. Who is there that can secure a state of absolute repose? But keep calm and let time go on, and the state of repose will gradually arrest.

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Butterflies

When I’m outside these days, butterflies are fluttering all about me. It’s springtime, a time to connect.

Saturday, I came upon two Monarchs mating, and stopped to take pictures thinking it would be short-term, but finally exhausted from watching all the fluttering, I left. At home, I read that when monarchs mate, the male uses the claspers on the end of his abdomen to attach to the vaginal groove of the female. Once attached, the female cannot get away, and the male transfers spermatophore components to the female in a process that can take up to 16 hours.

16 hours and without Viagra. Amazing.

This bumper sticker offers another form of camouflage

Posted on March 4, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Our Host

As I continue to go to the natural world to counteract the news, I’m with the last stanza of William Stafford’s poem, “A Message from Space” from his book The Way It Is.

And then the green of leaves calls out, hills

where they wait or turn, clouds in their frenzied

stillness unfolding their careful words:

“Everything counts. The message is the world.”

The mountain rolls her message like an unfolding scroll.

Posted on March 3, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Above the Fog

Because I’m too old to be an astronaut viewing our fragile, diverse planet from space, I left the fog to drive up to the top of Mt. Tam, and circle through landscapes.