The Theme For many years a string of beaver ponds, like shiny pearls on a necklace, ran along a little unnamed creek that flowed through a shallow valley of second growth woods and overgrown pastures just a half mile from my house. While taking walks I always enjoyed pausing and looking at the ponds, seeing the open water that reflected the sky and registered the wind, watching the geese, ducks and herons that lived there, and discovering the work zones…
In her book, Radical Joy for Hard Times, Trebbe Johnson wrote “…each place possesses its own particular presence, a dynamic animate force that the Romans called the genius loci, or soul of the place. The personality of this genius loci is formed by the entire human and natural history of the place and continues to express itself in the kinds of experiences people have there.” As I read this passage I knew that I had to return to my home…
I began my walk near the high sand cliffs facing the Atlantic Ocean. This shoreline was a battleground between land and ocean. The low growing plants and grasses did their best to stabilize and hold the ground while the relentless wind and waves and tides nibbled and gobbled inches and feet of shoreline every year. Standing at the Marconi Beach outlook in the Cape Cod National Seashore, I could visualize the location where in 1903 the first transatlantic telegraph message…
4:33 a.m. Wake Up Eyes open, wide awake. I had set the alarm for 5 knowing full well that I would be too late to be in the field at sunrise. But last night my lazy self couldn’t face getting up before 5. Yet some part of my mind had registered the 5:13 sunrise time and now that same part of my mind was rousing me from my sleep. My sit spot mind knew the rewards for being present at…
(John-5:30 a.m.) Very different thoughts ran through my mind as I drove the familiar route to Prompton Lake on my way to an early morning sit spot. Today I would be achieving a long held goal, sharing the sit spot experience with another, in this case my friend Jerry. This was an opportunity to see if others experienced the same nature magic that I did. This would be my chance to confirm if my methods for blending in, for achieving…
Down the well-groomed, well-marked, sandy-surfaced trail I stepped. I could have easily driven to the lot at the end of the park and walked quickly out to the little island where I planned to do my sit spot. Instead, I chose to stroll a mile along the trail through the woods, to take the time to tune my senses, to open my awareness, to bring my attention to the present. The whitish-tan sand scrunched ever so softly under my shoes….
Omens and auguries usually don’t influence me. Yet on this early morning as I walked briskly down Perimeter Road on Isla Mujeres and saw the darkness of night above me and the first faint hints of daylight on the horizon ahead, and spotted the bright point of a morning star shining in the zone between last darkness and first light, I couldn’t help but to feel that the star was a positive omen for my upcoming sit spot. A few…
The snow fell straight down, plumb line vertical, landing with a soft snap, crackle, pop like Rice Krispies dropping into a vast bowl of white milk. Vertical snowfall I asked myself. In the Midwest where I grew up the snow never fell straight down. It was always driven at an angle by the wind. Using distance to gain perspective, I looked across the inlet, studied the snow, and verified that it was indeed dropping straight down. It wasn’t a heavy…
Frost coated grass crunched under my boots as I strode through the back yard heading to the beaver pond. In the dim predawn light dark shapes moved by the compost bin; deer feeding on the grass, maybe stretching into the bin to snatch bits of discarded lettuce and fruit peels. As I came closer I heard their hooves click as they clattered over the old flagstone wall and disappeared in the woods. Bands of red and orange inched above the…
Ice covered Prompton Lake; thin clear ice sprinkled with snowflakes along the shoreline, a vast milky-white sheet of thick ice over the middle decorated with scattered snow-swirls. From a tall pine near the shore a white-breasted nuthatch, perched on the trunk, greeted me with its reedy, yank, yank, yank call. I walked across the boat ramp parking lot to the West Shore Trail, glanced ahead and saw a shallow furrow of frozen mud winding through the woods. Crunching along the…