Zero

This morning before dawn it’s zero degrees out.  

Zero, as if there was no temperature outside. Nothing is moving, no animals or birds, not even the wind. I stand motionless not wanting to ruffle the stillness holding the world.




The frozen sun rises pink on the horizon, shifts to light canary yellow that fades as the sun warms the air to eight degrees. 

Hidden in the stiff, unmoving trees, the unseen longing of leaves is tucked deep inside the wood waiting for spring. Beneath the snow, mice, voles and woodchucks sleep.  

A cardinal comes to the feeder of black sunflower seeds, his brilliant red feathers bright against the white background. Wrens flitter in, then chickadees, and a Downey woodpecker. The birds bring soft chattering to the brittle forest.

Solitude of Trees

Ostrander Hut, Yosemite

In a back issue of The Yosemite Journal, Howard Weamer writes about the Ostrander Hut that is in the area behind Glacier Point. The Hut is ten miles out in the backcountry, at an elevation of 8500 feet, and in winter is accessible only by cross-country skiers. Weamer was its caretaker and host for a good many years, and writes of the wide-ranging discussions that would go on into the night between people of different backgrounds. He also mentions the need for solitude that was often expressed by his visitors: "those who welcome it are assumed to have attained something special."

This phrase stayed with me as I hiked by myself out to the hut one gorgeous autumn day. The stone hut was locked up when I arrived because it’s a winter destination, but I looked in the windows at the tight sleeping quarters, then looked out at the tranquility of the forest, mountains, and the small lake that feeds Bridalveil Creek, and I felt contentment.

Does being comfortable with solitude mean that we have arrived at our goal of attaining solitude? Is there nothing that happens once we arrive? What about self-exploration?

Does solitude lead us into self-awareness, or does self-awareness lead us into solitude?

Rituals of Grief

People are kneeling in the darkness of a cathedral as a candle is processed by a dancer through the middle of the group to the center where a circle of candles is lit. A cello plays a meditative melody. A loaf of bread is broken and passed among the people. A bell rings, and we open ourselves to the mystery of this moment, not knowing what we will discover tonight.

No words have been spoken, but the gathering is filled with symbols. It is ritual, and we feel something rise within us, something we had forgotten was there, something that quickens our pulse and draws us in.

The holidays are filled with rituals. Which ones affected you the most? Which ones were comforting? Which ones disturbed your focus on what you thought was important?

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For this post I gathered two pages of background material on rituals, but I’m not going to use them because they have too many words. In our rituals we find a great symbol, but then we feel the need to explain the symbol in words, diluting the power of the symbol to speak in its own way.

Unexpected

This holiday season, I am not looking at the decorations on the houses in my neighborhood. I am looking beyond them to the trees and woods, to the sky and birds, I need the transcendence of nature.

Maybe it will be a sparkling, crystalline dawn

            with the rays of the rising sun glinting off ice-covered trees.

Maybe a herd of deer will meander down my street at midnight,

            with no one but me seeing them.

Maybe a cardinal will sit stoically on a branch

            as snow drifts down and collects on his back.

These I have seen in past years; they won’t likely be repeated. But I won’t know what the transcendent will be this year until it appears in the corner of my eye and surprises me. I can’t make awe happen. I can only stay alert and wait.

Grace of Community

Perhaps in no other season are people as aware of what is missing in their lives. In December we look for signs of hope, renewal, faith, and affirmation that the struggles we are in are worth the trouble.

In the midst of celebrating, we see people who are suffering, who are poorly dressed for winter, who are hungry, who are alone, and we try to help, because something reminds us that we are members of the same community.

December is also when much of the natural world in the northern hemisphere goes into hibernation. There is grace in this, in the letting go of what is past, in the retreating from active life and preparing for spring, and grace in the slower movements of the season. We think of people we had to let go, and in this holiday season we are reminded again and again of how much we miss them. We think of our own mortality. We think of the sources of energy for our life, what inspires us, and we feel the pull to live what we believe in everything we do.

December Evening

This evening in December is quiet, and the hills and fields are shaded in the sky’s pastel colors. Light has traveled beyond the earth’s edge and shadows will soon darken and lengthen into night. Nature begins to settle down into the blues and grays of winter.

I stand on my deck and listen to the woods — the creaking of the trees in the light wind, the light clack of empty black sunflower shells landing on each other, dropped by wrens and finches at the feeder. My thoughts move among the trees as I halfway watch the squirrels chase each other. Dusk fills the woods with shadows and I open to the mystery of what is here.

Snow Falling Along the Merced River

adapted from Mountains of Light

Snow begins falling while I'm sitting by the river that winds its way through the middle of Yosemite Valley. Birds splashing in the water along its edges don't seem to notice, although some begin to play with a little more excitement. The large flakes quickly change the landscape, covering the rocks and trees, the granite domes and mountains, and unifying everything in a blanket of white. 

My thoughts turn to the Ahwanechee who used to live in this valley. Did Chief Tenaya's people gather inside their shelters during heavy snowstorms to share stories, traditions, and tribal concerns? Or did they go out and play?

Yosemite in Winter

from Mountains of Light

Rising from my sleeping bag, I crawl out of the tent and hike around the frosted meadows. The sun is just peeking over Glacier Point and lights up the bare granite rock of North Dome and the meadow below with a warm yellow glow. In Cook’s Meadow, acorn woodpeckers hop up the trunks of dead trees, picking out acorns they stored there in the fall. By Sentinel Bridge, three young bucks hang out looking for trouble, their breaths coming out in small white puffs. 

The quiet, crystalline beauty of a winter dawn in the mountains fills my eyes, my heart, and my soul with joy.

Invocation of Trees

The trees, now naked of leaves, stand proud in the woods behind my house. They hold their strong bodies against the cold and rise up to the sky, rise up with their arms open in thankfulness to Creation for the year that has been, rise up in reflection and praise.

The birch trees twirl in the breeze with open hands like whirling Sufis, reuniting heaven and earth. The pine and fir trees, heavy with snow, bow their heads and scatter their resinous incense on the air. The oak trees feed acorns to the squirrels who have slept in, and protect nuthatches and wrens with their stout branches. 

Frost

There have been frost warnings the last two days, not that I’ve paid much attention because we did not plant a vegetable garden this year. But the news sank in and I realized this morning, as I looked into the intricate green lace of the woods behind the house, that soon it would all be gone. Half of the leaves have already turned and fallen. One solid freeze and the remaining green would turn yellow overnight. Then, with any kind of wind, all the yellow leaves would drop, leaving the brown and bare trees sticking up on the hill in the sun.

Poet Edward Hirsch spoke of the change of seasons this way:  We suddenly “feel something invisible and weightless. … It is the changing light of fall falling on us.”