Today I was waiting for sandwiches I’d ordered when looking out over the bay, I thought I saw a beak. Yes, a Great Blue Heron. What a gift!
A Great Blue Heron
Embrace
Monday the power was out for many in the Bay area, so because we have a generator grandchild arrived in his Halloween skeleton pajamas. No problem. We went to Old Mill Park where he found a tree into which we both could climb, a tree with two rooms so we could separate our tasks into cooking and a tool shop. At one point the tree became a pirate ship, and the wind came up so we needed to “batten down the hatches”.
I sit with it now, climbing in and out of the opening in the tree , especially when the land below became the ocean into which we each went scuba diving to commune with squid.
After I’m with my grandchild living in the land and sea of his imagination, when he leaves, I miss him, and feel slightly dizzy as though my world is set to organize and his is in response to what he sees and creates.
I’ve been to Old Mill Park innumerable times, and never realized the possibilities in this tree. Maybe I never even discerned it as separate from the multitude of tall trees. When I go back by myself, will this tree still open itself to possibility? Will I feel silly climbing up into a tree to view the world from its open enclosure? Will I feel silly swimming in the sea grandchild saw below it?
We were there to view the rushing creek, exuberant with the rain. And yet, for him, in those moments, the invitation was from the tree.
Thich Nhat Hanh:
The feeling that any task is a nuisance will soon disappear if it is done in mindfulness.
Rooted with Rock
More than 2000 years ago, the great Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu said: “The True Man breathes with his heels; the mass of men breathe with their throats.”
Walking brings breath to and through our soles, toes, arch, and heels; it brings us down to the ground.
Yesterday at Tennessee Valley beach, I was entranced with stone, with what surrounds, holds, guides.
At one point I walked on chert, and felt the ridges as though I was walking on the tail of a dragon. No wonder we love fairytales and I think now of the book by Kenneth Grahame, The Reluctant Dragon, about a dragon who preferred writing poetry to fighting.
Ilse Middendorf said: “Perceiving our breath as it comes and goes we discover an opening into our unconscious life, and bring about a conscious expansion into the whole of ourselves.” The whole of ourselves, and I feel the breath move in a wave, connected like a Mobius Strip.
Spring
This morning as I meditate, I feel spring in my heart, the opening scent of flowers, the invitation to unreel the layers of the bud, build a nest, fill it with eggs of creativity, and birth what’s here.
Yesterday, Steve and I decided he needed an x-ray of his arm, swollen and bruised from a fall and so we rushed out of the house even before I could grab a Kindle or book. I waited outside of the medical office and meditated and took photos of flowers lining sidewalks and streets. I realized I was near a library but it closed as I walked up, so I sat on a bench and sat, and felt, and thought of porches with rocking chairs and benches, and how enclosed life can be with ATM’s and self-checking, and everything delivered and left right at the door.
Because I watched and enjoyed The Wizard of Oz with my grandson this week, I came home and watched Pollyanna. Okay these movies are fantasies, very colorful fantasies, escapism, and yet, what is it when so much has left technicolor for a darker view of life? Another shooting – oh, my!
How do we balance what we view, and how we involve and evolve with immersion in the flowers blooming everywhere, except perhaps Tahoe which continues to stay white with snow. Yesterday I appreciated the gift of sitting outside with nothing to do and nowhere to be. Steve is fine, just swollen and bruised, and I feel the opening call of spring even as I more firmly root.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve.
More Photos for May Day
May Day
As a child, we made baskets for this day and filled them with candy and flowers, and hung them on our neighbors’ doors. This morning I read that baby swans were just born at the Las Gallinas ponds, so out I head for a May Day celebratory treat.
Sausalito
After rain in the night, I rise to go to Sausalito and immerse in the sounds of the bay. I meet some people who’ve come down from Tahoe. After a winter of white, they want to see green. We have green, blue, purple, and pink.
Visit to the Past
Yesterday we went to Felton to ride the Roaring Camp and Big Trees steam train. We went last year, and our three year old grandchild was excited to go again, as were we. What a thrill to go high, high, high into the redwoods and back down to stroll among the trees in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park.
Spring
Yesterday I was with family, both four-legged and two, at Muir Beach and on the coastal trail between Muir Beach and Tennessee Valley. Some of us walked further than others, and we all indulged in these words of Vincent Van Gogh.
Don’t just look at the spring, touch it, taste it. Get it inside you.
Ring Mountain
When my youngest started kindergarten, I trained to become a Terwilliger nature guide. My site was Ring Mountain, where I am now. This morning I stepped out and passed two houses to cross a stream and enter the sacred site.
This is Coast Miwok land. The Nature Conservancy bought it when the Tiburon Mariposa Lily was discovered to grow here and nowhere else. There is serpentine at the top surrounded by sandstone so flowers developed and then were caught as though planted to keep this land always open in honor of the native people and plants.
I couldn’t go far today because of the mud but I know there is a midden here and a hole in the rock where the Miwok people ground their acorns. It’s under a buckeye tree which loses its leaves in the winter and grows them back in the spring. Therefore sunlight is moderated, and it’s next to a stream, so acorns are leached so they can be pounded and eaten.
Salem Rice, an expert on Bay area geology, said that there were more different kinds of rocks on Ring Mt. than across half of the country. It’s a paradise of rocks and because there’s no pollution lichen grows luxuriously on the rocks.
In those days, I lead fifth and sixth graders on field trips on the mountain. I showed them how one could survive right here. Everything was provided. The bay provides clams, crabs, fish. Quail run free and can be caught in special traps. Boats can be built from the tule grasses if one wants to venture across the bay. Tule also provides housing, and soaproot provides soap. It’s a paradise and the road below is actually called Paradise.
With the children we also discussed the modern day. People need homes so how do we balance the natural landscape with that? The children understood. They are wise, like owls. Last night, I was entertained by the hooting of an owl.
At the top of the mountain are petroglyphs facing west. This is a sacred place. My photos only give a taste of a small part about 2/3rds up as I couldn’t walk very far along the trail with the mud, but more days come along with rain today.
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