Nature

Posted on June 27, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

The summer issue of Orion magazine is all about whales. Reading about how we were born in the sea, came to land, and then, some chose to return to the sea is thrilling in showing our need for exploration, adaptation, community, and diversity.

Reading the news today, I contrast killing and greed with the Southern Resident orca named Tahlequah. In 2018, she mourned the death of her newborn calf by carrying it on her head and pushing it through the Salish Sea for 17 days. She covered 1,000 miles.

Each day, we’re exposed to a need to grieve. Each day we read of more people hurt by the policies of the Trump administration and other leaders around the world. We share one planet. Can we learn from what surrounds us, our ancestors, our kin, the birds, the sea, the whales?

A Screech Owl comes to live in a friend’s garden, invited by an Owl House.

Posted on June 24, 2026June 24, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Touch

Yesterday I visited a friend at a Skilled Nursing facility in San Rafael. Everyone was lovely, and I helped the physical therapist with rehab for my friend which was minimal and painful movement in her condition. The physical therapist emphasized touch, intention, and connection. She said to imagine the bones coming together to heal, to not speak the intention, but to imagine and visualize the movement. The body responds to pictures, images. We visualized water, bones flowing like water. In visualizing, we touch, heal, connect.

I then went to the Las Gallinas sanitation facility where there are reclamation ponds providing nesting areas and homes for birds, and respite for those who walk around the ponds, sit on benches, and photograph the scenery and birds.

Egret rests on a nest on an island in the center of the pond.

Two egrets, one a sentry, and the other in flight.

The north side of Mt. Tam in the background

And as I post, my phone alerts me to an earthquake detected. I’m advised to “Drop, Cover, Hold On, Protect Yourself”. And all seems calm in the moment. I hear my gate rattle but all seems intact. Life. Never dull these days. Invitations to notice and connect with what’s happening abound.

Posted on June 22, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Above the Fog

I love the fog but today, after my dentist’s appointment, I needed summer warmth and smells so I drove to the top of Mt. Tam.

The ocean lies hidden below and beyond the hills

Switchbacks on the path coming up from the south

Looking East, Mt. Diablo rises from the fog

Posted on June 16, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Misted

I walked Tennessee Valley early this morning in an environment wet with mist. I walked with these words from Neil deGrasse Tyson.

We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us.

Immersed, I was surrounded with birds singing, flying, scurrying, feasting. I noticed the changing smells and the array of greens. I thought of algae changing the color of the reflecting pool in Washington D.C. to green. Plants rule, and yes, “the universe is in us”, and it’s for us to notice and live aware.

Posted on June 15, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Peace

To counteract the news of Trump and the horrors, lies and financial cost of him and his administration, I come to Anne Frank who died at the age of 15 after being sent to Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen.

Anne Frank: “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually turning into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us, too. I can feel the sufferings of millions, and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”

Do you see the Great Blue Heron flying across the rock at Tennessee Valley Beach?

Posted on June 14, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Exchange

Last night I was drawn to re-read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Perhaps it was a response to our White House being taken over by thugs.

Today on NextDoor I read that a mountain lion was caught on camera bringing down an adult deer by Eastwood Park, the park I walk to regularly. It was 7 PM so it was still light though the fog was embracing the ridge and valley in mist and gray.

The comments on the photo were on the grace of living here, of observing and living so clearly with transformation in nature and energy exchange.

11:11 this morning. Invitation to merge and reflect

The path and surroundings echo what winds within

Posted on June 12, 2026June 12, 2026 by Cathy Edgett · 2 Comments

Change: Enchantment

Yesterday it was hot and clear here, but then, I felt the wind shift from east to west, and knew the fog was moving in on its journey to cool and embrace. The branches of the trees played in the breeze, and in an hour or so, I saw wisps on the ridge. In the next hour, all was completely gray, and in the night our motion detector kept lighting up with the sway of the trees. This morning when I rose, I was surprised to see fog only on the ridge, and then, 20 minutes later, it was gone. Impermanence.

I sway now gently, back and forth, forward and back, circling like bamboo, the symbol of enlightenment in Japanese gardens, or like kelp in the sea. Swaying, feeling, moved by breath. Memories filter through like the dance of fog, like mist, sprinkled with fairy dust.

Fog creeping over the ridge at 6:09 this morning after clearing in the night.

And now I look again at 7:54. And so it goes, in and out, like breath.

A soft hover, and then, by 8:00, all is clear again.

Posted on June 8, 2026June 8, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Looking Down

Walking around my neighborhood I crossed the bridge to Eastwood Park, and took a photo of the creek. When I looked at the photo, I saw a perfect reflection of the sky. I was brought to consider even more deeply my steps, and where I place my feet. The ground and I reflect.

Posted on June 6, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Folding and Unfolding

Misty Hannah led us today in Sensory Awareness on Zoom. She began with how she was folding her laundry today, folding and unfolding, noticing weight and texture.

She invited us to feel our shape, and then slowly to fold down, and then unfold back up and bring our arms out. I became an egret, a heron, with wings broad and scooping the air. My arms were fluid, not fixed like an airplane wing.

Folded, I felt open in the back of the spine, breath pouring in, fluid. When I unfolded back up, my head kept moving on its wand of a neck making figure 8’s, a dance of infinity.

As I fold and unfold, and knots untie, I’m reminded of Rilke’s wonderful poem from the Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.

If we surrendered

to earth’s intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves

in knots of our own making

and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again ..

to fall,

patiently to trust our heaviness.

Even a bird has to do that

before he can fly.

The earth folds and unfolds, rises and falls.

Posted on June 5, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Heaven

Leaving early to walk Tennessee Valley to the beach, I saw a deer at the top of our driveway, and then, three more along the path to the beach. Quail were hidden but sounding: qua querko, and so many birds were singing, I felt I was in a jungle. What a gift of a morning!