Swimming Squirrels

A few people have reported seeing squirrels swimming across the Connecticut River--about a quarter of a mile wide--the boundary between Vermont and New Hampshire.

One friend reported seeing 4 gray squirrels swimming from New Hampshire to Vermont and one red squirrel swimming from Vermont to New Hampshire. Is that a political statement?

In these days of rampant tribalism (red vs blue; mine vs yours; white vs black), it can be hard to hold on to the idea (and thereby hold your tongue) that, in reality, we are all one. This is not a cliche. Just ask your deity. I've seen it during meditation, and i cannot un-see it. Boundary-less and boundless.

We are all just waves in the ocean, or, in this case, in the river. Just waves being carried to shore, where we kiss the earth and soak into our oneness. Thus has it ever been.

Woodland and Prairie

Last weekend i went to a wedding in northern Indiana, just at the western edge of the Eastern Woodlands. The habitat of hardwood forests originally stretched for a thousand miles from the Atlantic coast all the way to the present Indiana-Illinois border. As i drove toward the Illinois border, i could see where the woodlands (which are now mostly Hoosier cornfields) gave way to the prairie. The fields had fencerows filled with redbuds, and then suddenly, there were no trees growing in the fencerows. No more beautiful redbuds, which had nearly lined the interstate for an hour.

I was also seeing what couldn't be seen--the results of 100,000 years of glaciers advancing and receding. The land changed from ever so slightly rolling to absolutely flat--bulldozed by glaciers, but also by sedimentation from a proto-Lake Michigan, which expanded a hundred miles beyond its current shore. Flat, flat, flat.

The woodlands are rich in ephemeral wildflowers--spring beauties, phlox divercata, trillium. The prairie is a rich grassland, a savannah.

What i was seeing was the result of soil and rain--a little more here, a little less there.

What conditions are you creating for yourself? This moment conditions the next moment. When we bulldoze a situation with our opinions, it flattens other people's response to us. When we grow flowers of kindness and happiness, our future moments are more likely to be flavored with kindness.

You choose.