As the day designated for my surgery loomed steadily closer thoughts arose; in bad moments anxious scenarios of death, disability and disfigurement; in calmer moments practical concerns about all that needed to be done to prepare for the operation that would require a long incision across my neck. 

One morning, ten days out from surgery, my mind jumped past the surgery to the recovery process.  I saw myself immersed in an image of all the plant and animal life surrounding a nearby beaver pond.  I felt myself drawing healing energy from the scene. 

I realized, with a sense of relief that I could bring this image to mind at any time during my recovery.  But beneath the relief I sensed a trace of unease, a thought that I might not have the full story on the healing potentials of the world of nature surrounding the beaver pond. I had to find a way to squeeze in a sit spot session at the beaver pond before my surgery.

The Approach

Usually when contemplating a sit spot I look ahead at the forecast and try to select a clear, sunny morning so that I can enjoy the full sunrise experience.  But with the time pressures of pre-op lab tests, pre-op appointments, a COVID-19 test, and the rush to wrap up work and home tasks, only one morning was available, Friday, and the forecast called for thick cloud cover.

I awoke by 5:15.  Minutes later in the faint first light of day I stepped across my back yard, through a stand of slender ash trees, and on to the wide mowed path that heads down a long hill to the beaver pond.

I decided to E-bird as I walked, quickly logged on to the app on my phone, and began to count all the birds I saw and heard.  I figured this would slow me down and help me tune me into nature.  Quickly the tally mounted from 5 to 10 to 15, mostly familiar birds, but one uncommon treat, the husky fitzhew, fitzhew song of a willow flycatcher.  My mnemonic for the song was to picture the old Norman family Fitzhugh residing in luxury at their capacious Willow Manor.

Looking up at the cloudy sky I was surprised to see color, delicate swirls of pink tinged with orange and yellow, a pastel palette. I remembered what I had learned during my year of sit spots at Prompton Lake.  Every morning, every sunrise creates a light and color show; some are dramatic and fill the sky with broad bands of bright colors, some, like today’s are subtle and delicate with fleeting swatches and ribbons of color.

Morning Mist                                                                                     Interval 1 6:02 am

Grey mist floated above the valley of the little unnamed stream that fed the beaver pond, mist that seemed to float up and join the low gray clouds, mist that shrouded the trees, drifted over the marsh grass, and obscured the distant hayfield. 

I spotted movement in the tall grass across the pond, a buck in its summer tan coat with thick velvet covered antlers.  The buck turned, gazed at me and then slipped away into the bushes with a flap of his white flag tail.

There was no wind.  The still misty air created a cathedral-like sound chamber. Every sound registered clearly, every tone resonated and lingered in the humid air. I heard the whining engine of a big truck climbing the long hill on Route 191over a mile away.  I took a slow, deep breath, settled comfortably into my camp stool and began to scan the circle of sound around me.

To my left a swamp sparrow sang a musical chinga, chinga, chinga trill, slowly, melodiously, sounding like sacred instrument.  Another swamp sparrow to the right joined in, a faster trill that rang like a bell calling supplicants to prayer.

I heard more songs; the busy maids, maids put on the tea-kettle-lettle aria of a song sparrow, the insistent chatter of a house wren, the distant caw, caw, caw of a crow, the chek, chek, chek of a red-wing blackbird in flight and two mourning doves softly calling cooo, coo, coo.  The dove songs overlapped producing a blending of two long mournful coooo calls, a holy harmonic hymn.

Sky Dancers                                                                                       Interval 2 6:12 am  

Soft lilting chatter sounded above me.  Glancing up I spotted a barn swallow in flight.  Binoculars on it I saw its buff colored breast, rufous throat, blue-black back, trademark forked tail, and the best feature of all, long, slender, streamlined, swept back wings.

More chatter filled the air.  A flock of twenty or more barn swallows surrounded me.  Perhaps because I was sitting still or perhaps because I was partially camouflaged by the mist they ignored my presence and flew within feet of me.

I watched them flap and glide and lift and dip and turn and swirl.  One reason for these maneuvers was to dodge and dart and snatch flying insects, but there was also seemed to be social dimensions; the soft chattering back and forth, the swirling up next to each other, almost touching wings and then peeling off.  The swallows looked to me like a troupe of sky dancers; dancers born with stunning flight skills, skills honed by hours of flying and now creating dance after dance after dance in misty three dimensional space.

In Seed                                                                                               Interval 3 6:22 am                

I was already in to my third ten minute interval.  Time was flying.

Sitting in stillness my vision began to open up to details of nature around me.  I noticed the field grasses growing directly in front of me, grasses reaching the apogees of their summer growth cycle, grasses with diverse stems, leaves, and seed heads.

I discerned at least seven different types of grasses and decided to sketch them to better observe the unique qualities of each.  To my left grew a short stiff stemmed grass with thick tubular brown seed heads.  Next to it, a thin grass with narrow pale green leaves topped with slender pale seed heads heavily flecked with tiny strands of yellow pollen. 

Next, a medium height thick stemmed grass with short alternating leaves and a loose brown seed head that looked like a stalk of wheat.  Then came a grass with a droopy stalk, and next to it the tallest grass, at least five feet high, topped with a loose spray of tan seed heads. Next to that a thick stemmed grass with long angular leaves and a blocky head and finally a shorter plant with a spray of slender swaying stems.  All of this diversity was packed into about two square feet of earth, all of it nature-sown on disturbed ground. 

I had been reading Jennifer Ackerman’s The Bird Way, a book filled with research on the surprising cognitive feats of birds.  To me, as a psychologist who has measured human intelligence countless times, a key theme of her book was the existence of non-human, of animal, plant and bird intelligence.

Looking ahead at the small patch of earth-field in front of me, seeing the diversity of forms, the expression of every possible height, shape and color, I felt as if I was looking straight into the eyes of adaptive intelligence.

Reset                                                                                                  Interval 4  6:32 am               

Continuing to gaze at the grasses I reflected on the fact that plants just like humans need calcium for health, development, and structural strength; bones in humans and the gravity defying cell walls in plants.  And it was calcium levels that were the crux of my medical issue.   

My parathyroid glands, four little grain of rice sized glands located around (para) the thyroid, were tasked with secreting a hormone to regulate the amount of calcium in my bloodstream.  One or more of these glands were enlarged and over active and as a result drawing too much calcium from my bones.  No overt symptoms with this problem, but an insidious progression that could lead to weak bones, eventual hip fractures and kidney stones.  And calcium is so crucial to cellular metabolism that any irregularity can also compromise mood, memory, and energy.  The only treatment is surgery to remove the offending parathyroid glands.

As I thought about the surgery, about slipping beneath the fog of anesthesia, about “going under the knife,” I lost interest in my sit spot. Feelings of annoyance and impatience took over.  Why had my body betrayed me?  What was I doing here?  When would this stupid sit spot hour be over?  What was the point?

And I had to acknowledge that there wasn’t even a real beaver pond here anymore.  The family of beavers had left, died out, been trapped, or shot in the spring. April downpours had destroyed their untended dams. All that remained was a shrinking, mud-edged crescent of water to the left, and a shallow widening of the stream to the right.

Then I caught myself. These thoughts were the voices of anxiety and indolence resisting the experience of self-awareness.  One never knows when these subterranean forces might emerge to raise roadblocks and devise detours.  Fortunately, I had some ideas on how to handle this insurrection.

First, recall some words of reassurance.  An old friend of mine, a veteran of many surgeries, said, “If they are letting you go home the same day it’s just not that big of a deal, You’ll be fine.” 

Second, I needed to reset to nature mindfulness, to bring my attention back to sensory awareness, back to the present moment.  I looked up and again saw the swallows pirouetting above me.  I heard a veery chanting its flute-like, downward-spiraling vrdi, vreed, vreed, vreer, vreer song   A robin tutted, a swamp sparrow trilled, a woodpecker drummed, and a cardinal whistled its clarion, birdy, birdy, birdy, birdy.  A breath of breeze caressed my face.

Well Being                                                                                          Interval 5  6:42 am               

The sun lifted higher into the cloudy sky, the mist vanished, the day grew brighter.  A steady wind from the northwest arose swaying the grasses in front of me, grasses that over eons had learned how to bend and flow  and move with the breeze.  The wind and the grasses were old friends who knew how to dance together. I heard the soft whoosh of the wind through the leaves and stems of the grasses.

I inhaled the high dry fragrance of the grasses, the fresh scent of nearby flowing water, and the heady, intense, rich, fertile smell of full summer growth that emanated from the sun warmed soil.  Clusters of bright red berries festooned a nearby honeysuckle bush. A catbird mewed.  I felt an all embracing sense of well-being.

The View                                                                                            Interval 6  6:52 am

A mourning dove took off from a large willow tree across the pond and flew right over me. I watched its angular streamlined body, heard its wings flap, and admired its steady, straight purposeful flight.  A fluffy white insect hovered like a helicopter in front of me and then darted off toward a Russian olive tree bedecked with clusters of burgundy berries.  A common yellowthroat sang its slow, enchanting witchey, witchety, witchey song.

I gazed through the grasses to the vibrant green new shoots on the mud flats, to the filled-in, leafed-in, rounded shapes of the bushes, to a stand of tall densely leafed maples, to a gently sloping green hayfield speckled with purple milkweed flowers and white yarrow blooms , to a line of tall trees, the edge of a dark green forest, all of the growing green underneath an infinite white-blue sky.

I felt my vision shift to vignette mode, the periphery blurring, the step wise matrix of verdant growth from grasses to bushes to trees to field to forest pulsating with life, a view that pulled me deep into mindfulness.  This, I realized, was a healing view.

Six Days Later

The nurse belted my torso and arms to the operating table.  The anesthesia tech, Jake, asked me to take a few deep breaths of oxygen from a mask and then said “I’m going to start the anesthesia now.  I want you to think of a nice scene in nature.”

I smiled and said, “I’ve got that covered.”

During the week after the surgery as my neck healed, my strength returned, and my body recovered, I walked every evening at sunset down to the edge of the beaver pond to listen to the birds sing, to see the colors in the sky, and to take in the healing view.

I wish to extend sincere thanks to my primary care physician Dr. Joseph Seprosky for alertly suspecting the problem, to my endocrinologist Dr. Sharon Palousheck for systematically confirming the diagnosis, and to my surgeon Dr. Lawrence Gordon for skillfully, deftly, and gently excising the problem.

This sit spot took place on July 10, 2020 in Dyberry Township, Wayne County, PA.