Losing Track of Wonder

When did I learn not to see? After a week in the wilderness, I am no longer in awe of the majesty of the mountains rising up around me. 

Why did I forget how to taste? After the third day, I eat strawberries more for their nutrition than their fresh and exciting flavor. They tasted exotic on the first day.

A song moves me to tears on the first hearing. Then it becomes familiar and comforting. Then it’s nostalgic. Then quaint. What changed about the music?

There's a Cadence to Silence

It's odd we don’t think it's odd that we regard silence as deficient and not as full. 

We fill the air with banter, music, sports, news and weather updates until we fall exhausted into bed, the sounds of the day still ringing in our heads. Yet we feel unsatisfied because we’ve heard little that we want to remember. In the manner of the Quakers, we should remain silent until we have something important to say.

Words and music have powerful influences on us. If we listen to music throughout the day, it’s no wonder that we’re exhausted. Every song has a specific emotion, so every five minutes we are pulled into a different emotion. After a while, we no longer know what we’re feeling.

Improving the View

I set up a second writing desk at home, this one has a view of the green woods behind my house. Already I feel a surge of inspiration.

The woods aren’t visible from the desk where I typically write because the window is too high. You might think this change was an obvious decision, and long overdue, since I often write about how the woods inspire me. It’s only taken me six years to make the adjustment.

When we moved in, we put everything somewhere just to get the moving van unpacked. And that’s where everything stayed, with us arranging our lives around these objects.

How many other matters in my life have been organized in the same way, following patterns I set up simply to get me through the day?

Now and then I need to stop what I’m doing and check to see if what I’m doing nurtures me and others in the long run.

Trees With Leaves

The woods behind the house now has hundreds of interesting trees with a variety of leaf shapes and colors.  For months this winter I saw only bare brown trunks and branches that basically looked the same, so I looked right past them to the hill beyond.

People are like trees, and what makes people interesting are their differences, their peculiarities, their way of talking and thinking, the way they stir their coffee when they’re perplexed, or maybe they prefer tea over coffee. 

What makes us valuable as friends is sharing how we see situations from a different perspective. 

Walking Free

Out walking this morning, I am shocked to find that the world has gotten along on its own just fine without me. I haven’t been outside in a week, being busy with tasks inside the house. In the meantime, the trees have changed from empty branches to umbrellas of thick green, bushes and plants are flowering, and birds are filling the air with songs. I remember that I am part of the natural world, not the other way around. It feels enlightening to be outdoors again.

As I walk, my breathing speeds up to match the pace of the body. My thoughts slow down to move at the pace of my breathing. My mind and body reconnect, unlike when I sit motionless at my desk and work with my mind, ignoring the needs of my body until I stand up stiff, hungry, and dehydrated.

Morning Fog

Before dawn, fog moves up from the river, through the forest, and fills the woods behind my house. It’s a bit gloomy. Yesterday we had sunshine, and the brightness brought a surge of energy. Today, not so much. I want to put on a sweater, sit in a soft chair by the window, drink hot tea, and read a book about someone else’s adventures.

As the sun rises slowly, the white particles of mist float and turn on the whims of the breeze. At first glance, it looks like fine snow is drifting down.

Then I see it.

Boundaries

(photo of the top of Yosemite Falls in winter)

I do not make the transition between seasons easily. I get comfortable with the season I’m in, having rediscovered its unique beauty, and I don’t want to let it go. All winter, without leaves on the trees behind my house, I’ve been able to see across the valley to the hill on the other side. This week, with a little rain and warmer weather, the leaves have begun to emerge and close off my view. I miss the beauty of the snow and being able to see the contours of the land that soon will be hidden by the forest.

Making any transition has never been easy. I remember one fall when I was hiking in Yosemite in late October anticipating a week of dry days and cool, but sunny weather. One night a snow storm moved in. The next day I went on my hike, as planned.

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On the Yosemite Falls Trail going up the canyon wall, a scattering of snow begins to appear at the 6000-foot level. It gets deeper the higher I go, making the upward hike slippery and a little dangerous. I go around a bend and hit a cold wind funneling down, and think of the French voyageurs battling harsh weather as they canoed across Lake Superior. Then I think of Sigurd Olson canoeing there after them, in the Boundary Waters between Minnesota and Canada, listening to the voices of nature around him.

Old Trees

There’s a street near my house that used to have large, majestic trees hanging over the road that provided cool shade even on the hottest summer day. For one block it felt like I was driving through what I imagine Sherwood Forest would look like.

Now half the trees are gone, trimmed back or cut down because they were old, and dead limbs were breaking off in storms. The street has a different feel to it, and it’s become every other streamlined road that takes me from here to there. I used to take a deep breath on that road to center me to something solid, real, and a little magical as I drove off to start my day.

The land we live on influences how we relate to others and deal with the day’s challenges.

Walking With Senses Open

To really experience nature, I need to have all of my senses working. I want to be aware of the large, carnivorous animals moving through the woods before I run into them, of course, but I also want to see beyond the generalities of woods, sky, and river and see their specifics.

I want to look at the individual trees, and see how they are different — the roughness of the bark, the shape of their leaves, and if they have nuts. I want to watch the interaction between the river and its bank and see what creatures live there. I want to listen to the quieter sounds of what is going on around me, and find the creek that is trickling somewhere nearby. I want to watch the movements of a vole walking under the leaves that is making them twitch. I want to have a feeling for the landscape, so that when I come around the bend I will instinctively know if it is going to rise or go down, be in sunlight or in shade.

Spring Trees

Tiny buds that I can’t see on trees in the distance are giving the woods behind my house a light green sheen.

Last week I noticed a beautiful bare tree. Without any leaves, everything was visible —the trunk, main branches, even the smaller branches as they extended thinner and thinner into thousands of fingers. The tree was so symmetrical that I gazed at it in admiration, then had to leave because I was at a stop light.

We are like trees and the branches are our lives –relationships, projects, work, and all of our interests over the years. As some of our interests end, those branches die and fall off. As people we knew in high school move away, those branches never develop any further. When we start new interests and relationships, new branches appear and grow. The roots and the trunk of who we’ve been remain strong and provide support for our new ventures.