Nature – Cathy's Blog!

Posted on October 10, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Rodeo Beach this Morning

The tide was pouring in so we couldn’t check out our usual haunts. Oddly it was low in the lagoon, though up by the ocean, and the whole beach was wet from the high tide before. Being with the ocean helps with the continuing shock of the political news.

Alan Watts: I think this is why I love the ocean. It’s the most difficult part of nature to mess up with emblems and symptoms of man’s dissociated consciousness. It’s an environment in which the awareness of our roots can awaken, in which space (so real because of the light and color) can be seen to be joining things instead of separating them. Yes. And I’ve just discovered that knocking on the wall of space and consciousness was my own heart beating.

We can’t walk past the rocks, so pause and observe the changing dance.

Rock rests like an elephant, trunk atop the water.

Posted on October 8, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Listening to the Wind

When Anne Carson was informed she won the Nobel Prize in literature, there was a short talk and then the poet responded she was “in Iceland,” where she was “listening to the wind“.

What a beautiful response to winning such a prize.

It’s Fleet Week in San Francisco, and on a beautiful, warm, blue-sky day, the Blue Angels are rumbling the air overhead. I love seeing the response of the birds It’s as though they want to show how easily and relatively quietly it can be done.

Today I read there’s something in educational circles called the “400-word wall”. It seems after reading 400 words, not pages, words, people “begin to feel fidgety or need distraction or need to look at something else”.

I think most of us are noticing our attention span isn’t what it once was, but for me, this is even more motivation to stay with what I’m doing and “listen to the wind”.

Posted on September 29, 2026September 29, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

The World Around Us

This morning the moon is shining in the sky. Yesterday I was at Sutro Baths on a perfect day.

Lao Tzu:

Just remain in the center watching. Then forget you are there.

Posted on September 26, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Cleansing

I was at Rodeo Beach this morning. It was low tide and the fog had settled in. All was calm, except for the dogs frolicking happily about. The dead seals from last week had washed out to sea with the full moon high tides, but there was a new one further down. Sadly, there were many dead Common Murres. Because of the warming ocean temperatures, their prey fish are too deep for them to dive down and reach them. They’re starving and dying.

I’m with the words of Mary Oliver: My work is loving the world.

Father and Son fishing with seagull watching from the rock.

And the waves come in. The seagull seems content to simply watch and be.

Form and Non-form – Seagull still there.

Posted on September 25, 2026September 25, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

The Elements in Fall

Today I settled into a rocking chair on the deck. My intention was to see if I could be still enough to see how many birds come to the fountain. I was glad I wasn’t wearing red as hummingbirds were swerving back and forth chasing each other in delight, and I wouldn’t want to have appeared as a food source. I recently learned that a group of hummingbirds is called a Bouquet. They flew too fast to be photographed as did a Monarch butterfly, a symbol of fall.

It’s Dolly Parton Day, 9 two 5. Perhaps that’s why the fountain celebrated and splashed with pink.

And then, the splash. Yes! Feathers shine like glass.

A meadowlark comes to consider a fountain bath

Posted on September 24, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Equanimity

It’s a beautiful fall day. Last night I sat outside with the waxing moon on its way to fullness on September 26, the Harvest moon.

Equanimity is my guidance these days. AI defines it as “a mental calm and evenness of temper, especially in tough or stressful times. It lets you stay steady and clear-headed instead of reacting with panic, anger, or despair”.

Currently these are words to AI, words latched together without context, feeling, dedication, determination, or meaning. Who knows if or when it will come to understand what it means.

Meanwhile the political news is staggering. Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s book End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World helps me understand the depth of corruption, and how tragic it is, as we fight for us all, humans, plants, animals, for the connection we share in the precious gift of living, loving, and dying.

The birds where I live are singing and tweeting as though it’s spring. It’s a cacophony of celebration and joy. I vibrate with the sound of their voices, the swish of their wings.

Posted on September 22, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Being With

We continue to have fog, the mist giving a sense of mystery and an invitation to delve within. I’m with the words of Dag Hammarskjöld in his book Markings.

The longest journey is the journey inward.

That leads me to John Muir’s words found in his journal after his death.

“I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”

Stories and dwellings in the trunk of a Tree

The creek is quiet on the fall equinox awaiting the winter rains.

Posted on September 21, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Stillness and Fluidity

This morning I’m with these words of Thich Nhat Hanh:

We don’t have to go anywhere to obtain the truth.

We only need to be still

and things will reveal themselves

in the clear water of our heart.

That brings me to my son and his wife’s whale watching trip. I thought they saw 20 whales but my son informed me that they saw three feeding groups, and one group had 35 whales in it. I’m feeling the magic, joy, connection, individuality, and serenity – fluidity. A wave of sea lions joined in to feast on the fish swarming in. Celebration is happening all around us.

Whales have complex brains. Like humans and other creatures, they feel complicated emotions. They grieve. One mother orca carried her lifeless calf around the globe for 17 days. She traveled more than 1,000 miles. Once on land, they returned to the sea, and now they come close so we can see more of what we are, and can be. We’re learning from trees and whales, and what’s revealed is inside the “clear water of our heart”.

Posted on September 20, 2026September 20, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Contrast

Yesterday one son and his wife were on a whale-watching boat in Monterey. She took 18 videos and 87 photos. They saw 20 humpback whales and 200 sea lions and birds and waves. The whales were jubilant, jumping and spraying rainblows and waving their tails. It can only be joy and an intention to share. One whale came within five feet of the boat. A friend was in Baja this winter to be with the whales and their babies. The mothers want people to touch the babies. They’re reaching out to us.

I contrast that to a must-read book I’m reading. It’s an easy read. It explains what feels so hard to understand as we watch those in power seek to divide and destroy. I highly recommend End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor.

We can fight fascism when we understand what’s going on, the groups that have united to destroy the world because somehow they think they’ll be saved. Ego, anyone?

I tried to insert a video but I’m told the file type isn’t supported here. Visualize whales jumping and showing their tails, and spouting rainbows. An amazing experience.

Grace – it’s good luck to see rainbows in the spouts!

Posted on September 19, 2026 by Cathy Edgett

Listening

I’m reading a book, Do Glaciers Listen? by Julie Cruikshank. She’s looking at how differently Westerners and the local Indigenous peoples in the area of the Saint Elias Mountains where Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory meet, view and respond to glaciers.

One woman, Mrs. Annie Ned, speaks about “human and environmental history from her own experience of hunting, trapping, and living there for almost a century”. Her advice is to “listen for different stories”. The author then writes, “Eudora Welty, an American writer who, like Annie Ned, lived well into her nineties, also maintained that there is a distinction between listening to stories and listening for stories. “Long before I wrote stories,” she reflected in her autobiography, “I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them.”

The Indigenous people in this book view glaciers as living entities. They interact with them and treat them with respect. Perhaps we, too, can listen for stories in what surrounds us where we live. What speaks and resonates?

I was at Rodeo Beach this morning. The Snowy Egrets were feasting and enjoying the low tide as the tide rolled in.