Watercourse Way

The melting snow shows the flow of water through my lawn--something that is normally invisible to me.

The leach field on the north side of the lawn melted. Unusually, i can see the path of the pipe leading from the septic tank to the leach field.

The snow on the septic tank melted first. This snowmelt is usually one of the first signs of spring, but i know that, in December, Mother Nature is just teasing me.

Another waterway is the footing drain from the house, which feeds into my small fishpond and then drains off into a swale, leading, 200 feet downhill, to a seasonal and unnamed stream.

These two waterways are tangent to each other--so close, yet asymptotic, not touching.

How often, in our lives, do we almost, but not quite, touch another person? We chatter on about our lives. They yammer on about theirs. Are we touched? By their joy? By their pain? By their delight?

Too often, our comparing mind compares my experience to theirs and judges it accordingly. Two streams flowing in different directions. Yet we will all meet at the river of Life.

Flat Calm

The gardens are looking flat. Tall phlox, bee balm, asters, mums have been cut down and composted.

Sunlight is "flat." The sun has moved so far to the south that it shines obliquely over the landscape.

Mood can begin to feel flat on gray days as the hours of daylight shorten.

I experience calm as flat, but it's a slightly happy flat, like floating on the river in my kayak.

Calm. Let's enjoy this calm vacation from the hub-bub of news, becalmed from the busy-ness of going and doing.

How does calm feel to you?

Ice Cubes on a Stick

Ice Cubes on a Stick

Taking a walk by the river, i was surprised to see icicles on the shrubs in a variety of forms--ice cubes on a stick, icicle fingers, and icicle drapery. Nature's artistry is amazing.

The river rushed by, just inches away--water in its liquid form--while i admired water in its solid form. Water appeared in many different bodily forms (solid ice), which only later, when i wasn't looking, would return to liquid form.

Our body appears to be solid, yet we know that it is 70% water. We don't pay much attention to the water flowing into and out of our body. We think, "Water. My body. Urine." and thereby fail to see the water-water-wateriness. Not different water. The same water in different forms.

And really, couldn't we say the same thing about all the people on this earth? Water in such a variety of forms.

Icicle Fingers

Brown Waterfall

Walking across a bridge, i looked at the brown water falling over the nearby little dam. The water is brown not from dirt or erosion but from tannin. The oak leaves that fell off the trees in the recent snowstorm are loaded with tannin. Tannins are part of nature's fermentation process, resulting from decaying vegetation or peaty soils. Surface water, such as ponds and rivers, that have a lot of tannin turn the color of iced tea.

How often do i judge appearances because that person doesn't look "normal" (whatever that might be)? I have to give myself an inner pep talk. That person looks how they look. Period. They can't help how they look. If i find it unpleasant, that's my problem. P.S. Cheryl: Look at yourself and stop sticking your nose in someone else's business.

The brown waterfall is beautiful.

Bedraggled Mums

The mums on the front step are beginning to look bedraggled due to frost, rain, and age. Ah, yes. Mums deteriorate, just as we ourselves do.

A British friend describes her mother's aging process as a sort of pool-and-drop river. Her mum's health remains steady for a while, then there's a small or big emergency. Her mother recovers, but loses some functioning, and never returns to her previous state of health. We could call this aging process "weathering the storms of the body"--frost, rain, and age.

This is what bodies do: Deteriorate. How can we feel happy despite the fact that the body feels lousy?

Mindfulness can lead us, breath by breath, into our calm place, into contentment with this present moment. Not comparing this moment to any other moment. Simply happy to be alive, no matter what we look like.

Mums age and die.
Sigh.

The Elements

I've returned home to the North Country, skin tanned by the west Texas sun, hair blown wild by the wind, and the body slightly dehydrated from the heat. The elements of heat and wind (air) showed their strength, but didn't arm-wrestle me to the rocky ground, though most plants looked parched. Surprisingly, standing in a 105 degree hot spring beside the Rio Grande on a 101 degree day felt really good on my bare feet..

Here in the North Country, the day is chilly, the sky is clouded, and mud and mud puddles are drying up. Green begins to twinkle in my brown gardens, inviting me outdoors.

Hot/cold, sun/clouds, heat/chill, wet/dry--our skin feels all of these. Some are pleasant; others unpleasant; and we react accordingly.

Really, the air is blowing through us. We breathe air, which is never ours anyway, and let it go when we exhale. We marinate in the temperature du jour--the sensations of our skin responding as it loses or gains heat continually. We drink water from the tap (from a well, from the city water tanks, which come from rivers and reservoirs). Our body feels solid, yet is ever-changing as water, heat, air, and solids enter, pass through the body, and exit via the trap doors at the base of the torso.

We ourselves are plain old elements, recombined.

Pulling Water Chestnut

This morning i joined 6 other volunteers to pull water chestnut out of the Connecticut River.  We were instructed by a staff person from the Connecticut River Watershed Council and 2 interns.

Kayaking on the river was a lovely way to spend a beautiful morning. We found and pulled about 2 dozen plants in 3 hours, down from 10 dozen last year, and 50 dozen two years ago.

We purify our own minds by recognizing our own bad habits, and, if we can, pulling them out by the roots. Even if we don't get our bad habit out by the roots, we can delay its growth and delay its "going to seed" with the simple mindfulness of recognizing an unskillful mind state.

And like this patch of water chestnut, over time, we find our unskillful mind states arising less and less frequently.

Pulling Water Chestnut

This morning i joined 6 other volunteers to pull water chestnut out of the Connecticut River.  We were instructed by a staff person from the Connecticut River Watershed Council and 2 interns.

Kayaking on the river was a lovely way to spend a beautiful morning. We found and pulled about 2 dozen plants in 3 hours, down from 10 dozen last year, and 50 dozen two years ago.

We purify our own minds by recognizing our own bad habits, and, if we can, pulling them out by the roots. Even if we don't get our bad habit out by the roots, we can delay its growth and delay its "going to seed" with the simple mindfulness of recognizing an unskillful mind state.

And like this patch of water chestnut, over time, we find our unskillful mind states arising less and less frequently.

The Storms of Life

Jim's deep backyard ends at a stream that makes a right-angle turn. So you could say that his backyard is bounded by a burbling brook on 2 sides.

That sedate creek became a raging river last Sunday during Hurricane Irene. When Jim left for church, the brook was turbulent; when he returned, a flash flood had spread over his football-field-sized backyard and into his garage. He was able to close the back door of the garage against the water that was pouring in.

Then he watched as a 15-foot-long brush pile that he'd been adding downed sticks and weeds to for 5 years, floated, turned slightly, and jammed into the back of his garage, effectively forming a beaver dam barrier that was held in place by the force of the water.

In our meditation practice, we eventually learn that the debris of our thoughts are floating down the river of consciousness.

Then, sometime, when we are flooded by the waters of emotion, our mindfulness is strong enough, and we have enough faith that mindfulness can protect us. We decide we can tolerate the turbulent emotion for 1 minute or 10 minutes, and so we watch the flood.

An emotion has 2 parts--body sensations (often unpleasant) and a thought (very slippery). We decide to observe just one of these.

We watch body sensations--the tension, the tightness--or we watch the bumpy, smooth, rough, short, or shallow breath.

If our mindfulness is strong, we watch thoughts go by like downed trees in a swollen river. That thought, which seemed so strong and sturdy and true, actually comes into view, floats by us rapidly, and disappears. Gone.

The next thought rushes by, again gathering all our attention and even our belief in it, then it too is gone.

Mindfulness is our ally during the storms of life.

Hurricane Irene

Hurricane Irene has come and gone. It rained for 20 hours, beginning and ending with a couple of hours of mist.

I was kayaking on the Connecticut River looking for migrating nighthawks (none) for an hour before the rain started on Saturday evening. The confluence of the West River and the Connecticut was extremely low, with the put-in place being a slender, shallow channel through mud flats.

All the boats had disappeared from their docks. During the last heavy rains, 3 years ago, all the boats and docks floated down to the dam, 10 miles downriver.

By noon on Sunday, the rivers were over their banks and the barren docks were breaking up and floating away one by one. Streams were also out of their banks and flooding the floodplains. Woe to people who had homes or businesses in low-lying areas.

The treetops waved wildly for about 10 minutes, and i thought my eastern casement windows (closed but not locked) might rip off their hinges and fly away.

The electricity went out, as we knew it would, but for only 3 hours.

Rain and winds sweep through our lives. Two weeks ago, a writing friend learned she had liver cancer. She died a few days later.

At noon yesterday, the rivers looked more solid than liquid, with trees, branches, debris, and docks floating away.

Our earth-ly bodies also float away, down the river of life.

A raindrop dies into a puddle, into a trickle, into a stream.

We die, the ego dies, into the ocean of impersonal space that surrounds us.