Doing Nothing, Just Sitting In the Woods

Some days, when’s a lull between the usual rush of activities, I don’t know what to do. I’m restless and look around for something productive to work on. Then I see the woods.

In midwinter, the woods in central Illinois are bare and brown. The sky is generally gray, and on most days there isn’t enough sun to satisfy my cat. Without leaves in the way, I can see a mile over to the next hill where there are more brown trees. Brown doesn’t interest me much. I prefer green.

Yosemite in Winter

from Mountains of Light

Rising from my sleeping bag, I crawl out of the tent to take a dawn hike around the frosted meadows for an hour or so. The sun peeks 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 are hanging out looking for trouble; their snorts come out in white puffs. 

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. 

Zero

Before dawn it’s zero degrees outside.  

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




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

Some would say it’s bitter cold. I call it refreshing. Bitter starts at minus 20. I’m from Wisconsin. Yet when I breathe in, it feels like my lungs get prickly.

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

Winter Canticle

Primordial turn of Earth.

Snow.

Solitude with stone.

Light rises,

            travels below the south ridge.

Cold lingers

            on the shadow side of the valley.

Fleeting moments of warmth midday.

Solitude of Trees

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 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 close 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?

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.

In the Quiet of the Night

One year after the Christmas Eve service, I walked around Watertown, Wisconsin through six inches of snow as it continued to fall, muffling the sounds of the occasional car going by.

I walked past houses with windows lit up with warm lights and people celebrating inside, and went down to the Rock River.

The Transcendence of Nature

Its wonder, majesty, and downright gob-smacking awe.

Nature has the power to lift us out of ourselves, especially when we’re in the wilderness.

It renews, restores, and rehabilitates us when the pressure and drudgery of city life become too much. If you have a place in nature where you go because you feel alive there, then you’ll appreciate the following quotes. While these writers were all speaking about Yosemite, and often in terms of spirituality, feel free to translate the words to fit your own favorite place, whether it’s at the ocean, in the desert, or out on the prairie.

            *

"That mute appeal (pointing to El Capitan) illustrates it, with more convincing eloquence than can the most powerful arguments of surpliced priests."  -- Lafayette Bunnell, 1851

Cantus

In listening to Arvo Part’s Cantus in Memorium, I am struck by the silence.

Silence is programmed into the score as part of the music. This silence was not absence, of waiting for musicians to play the next notes. It was presence. It was not waiting for something to happen. It was already happening, because we were waiting in the concert hall, and listening.

When we go into nature, we travel with the thousands of thoughts that crowd our head. We enter with the noises of the city ringing in our ears. We have learned to tune out much of what we hear going on around us in our concrete environment.