A Morning Person's Observations #7: Nesting

I recently spent a week with some of the Blythes in Colorado, then a few days with my Aunt Angie outside of Denver, then took a long road trip with my friend Matt back to Seattle. The morning after we got to Seattle, I took Matt to the Pea Patch so he could see where the magic happens. We sipped our coffee and he identified all the plants (he's much better in a garden than I am!), and I saw the prayer flags dangling from the tree. They made me smile.

flags on fence, with flags in background

more flags!

There are a few flags in the Pea Patch. On the fence, on the trellis, but my favorite is that one hanging from the tree. It's my favorite because a few weeks ago I saw a squirrel bite it in half and then try to run off with one of the pieces, but struggling because there was still an end attached to the tree. Eventually the squirrel figured it out and gnawed off part of the flags from both ends, bunched all the flags together, then took off up the Douglas Fir, I'm assuming to pad its nest. It was hilarious to watch.

flag leftovers

While at the Blythe Spirit, I went out to the Peace Fort, a treehouse my cousin made, to write in The Pine (her log for the treehouse). The cabinet she made to store the log in had a massive pile of sticks leaned up against it, almost like a miniature beaver dam. It seemed too perfect to be made by a critter, so I assumed she had built it to keep critters out. But when I opened the cabinet there was a pile of green leaves to the left of the box that holds the log. The leaves were mashed to perfectly take up the space between the box and the other side of the cabinet, it was so memorizing to look at the way they had been sculpted it took me a good fifteen seconds to realize there was someone home. A critter that Aunt Angie and I later identified as a Ringtail Raccoon (but of the mountain variety, so incredibly small) was pressed as far away from me as possible, probably freaking out.



My Uncle David got the box out and we left the treehouse to Steve Ringtail (we called all raccoons Steve at IslandWood) to winter in. Looking through the log, I was able to deduce that Steve had moved in since the week before, when my Aunt Diane wrote in The Pine. Or possibly she interacted with Steve and his newly created habitat, but didn't think it was impressive enough to make note of it in The Pine. I'm going to assume the former, which means Steve only took a week to nest and secure his dwelling in the Peace Fort. I like that quality in a organism, because I can feel connected to an area after one cup of coffee.

hummers

Drinking coffee at the breakfast table for the past week with my grandfather was a treat. As he cycled through his frequent questions and memories, it felt like a reset to the day. Aunt Angie says there are four languages we rely on when our minds stop working for us and begin to work against us, confusing us, frustrating us. We can still relate to smiles, music, gentle touches, and chocolate. I didn't know this list until the week after cabin time with Grandfather, but one of the things he remembered during both of my visits this summer was the hymn, "Day is dying in the west," that he sang at two sunsets two months apart.

And then the following week would be full of travel and moving before I made it back to my alleyside Pea Patch for my morning coffee. I had my coffee some mornings on my aunt's back patio, watching the hummingbird feeders as the dogs came and went. I had coffee at a campsite in Wyoming. Matt and I drank it while walking toward the water. We stumbled upon a damp sandy expanse just soft enough to capture ALL the prints. It told a story of birds, herons, mice, deer, other critters scurrying across the opening. The next morning I sipped my coffee as we drove through a hazy, hazy Montana. They cut the power in one town as a preemptive measure so we had to go to the next town to get gas.

Whahatoya, one of my nests

And finally back to Seattle, to drink coffee in the Pea Patch with Matt, looking at the flags taken away by the squirrel. When EJ first put flags up at the original Alleyside, she hung them inside, then realized they needed to be rehung outside so as the shreds of fabric came apart, the prayers would travel out to the world. At this moment I like to imagine the squirrel was helping carry the prayers of those prayer flags forth, sending their energy and intention further into the world, so wherever I travel I can carry the feeling I have drinking coffee in the mornings in the Pea Patch, and nest as easily as Steve Ringtail.

A Morning Person's Observations #6: Life and Death in the Pea Patch

One professor who introduced the concept of sit spots to my class told us to not always sit in the same spot. "Get up and explore around your spot," he said. "See if you can find the paths and homes around your spots, where other travelers are coming through."

This has been a dry, sunny, not too cold, clear winter in Seattle. One morning before daylight savings, there was still only a corner of the Pea Patch in sun. I went and stood under the Doug Fir hanging over the fence, the opposite corner from my usual bench sit, to soak in the morning Vitamin D while I sipped my coffee.

The chickadees were out that morning. I know I'm not running late if the chickadees are still in the Pea Patch. They grew more and more comfortable with me standing below the Doug Fir, and flitted to branches closer and closer to me. Finally, one hang upside down from a cone and started pecking at some of the seeds. I hadn't been close enough to them yet to see what they eat, it was amazing.

It's been a year since David and I moved to the Pea Patch apartment. A year of sitting and sipping my coffee back here. I just noticed this morning that the white flowers on the tree have blossomed again. It's important to notice this when it happens, because in a week or two the first spring storm will take them all down. I love that I've sat under this tree for a year and am familiar with this pattern.

But I love how the Pea Patch continues to surprise me too. A gray cat slipped under a bush and came up to me meowing, and rubbing against my legs. I pet this gray feline for a bit, then the cat went down toward the tulips and slipped out of site. About five minutes later, the chickadees started a call and response. Some other birds chimed in, one that did four long high notes. And the arpeggio bird, which I haven't heard in a long while! I've never seen it, or I should say I've never connected its call with a bird I could see, but when I first heard it at my sit spot at IslandWood, it sounded like a young child learning arpeggios on the piano, eagerly jumping up and down along the notes.

The intensity and rapidness of the responses toward the calls made me wonder what the cat was up to. It seemed like they were pointing the feline friend out to any other birds, which was good of them since no one had belled the cat.

Somehow or other a crow died in February. Its carcass hangs from the one of the top branches of the chestnut tree, swayinh ominously above the apartment building in the breeze. As the weeks go by, it doesn't seem to have decayed much. There are certainly more flies in the Pea Patch at first, then not too many. I wonder if they've eaten out the core of the carcass and moved on, and all that hangs now are feathers on bones. But there'd have to be meat holding the feather to the bone, right? No way to explore this further, the carcass is so high in the tree. It will be a fun item to pay attention to, what happens to a decomposing crow that's so far out of reach? Can't get scooped up like roadkill, can't get eaten by anything except creatures that can fly/climb that high.

Some patterns are repeating in the Pea Patch, and some new intriguing ones are just starting.

A Morning Person's Observations #5: The summer's colors

The birds sit on top of this tree

This is one of the first times in Seattle I've been really excited when the summer was ending. The overcast sky, the slightly cooler temperatures, the shorter days. I'm loving it all. Mostly because it's all signally that it's time for the school year to start, and I'm really excited to be teaching again.

The p patch is full of dark greens. I went out this morning to sit on the bench and take in the world and it was actually wet for the first time in months. A light morning rain had made the whole garden smell earthy. There were some birds on top of the Douglas Fir, they were robin-sized but their silhouettes showed skinnier beaks.

Before I get swept away in the excitement and beauty of this fall in Seattle, I want to take a moment to reflect on my gratitude for this summer. The p patch gave some amazing colorful moments and helped me relax. I went from a stressful anxious time to a positive, relaxed attitude thanks to many things, one of them being mornings in the p patch with the plots of summer colors.

I wandered lonely as a cloud...

These remind me of the Lupine Lady

And this makes me think Tom Sawyer and friends were here

"The summer sun will set," she said, "if you leave it up there long."

Maybe someone else likes drinking coffee in the p patch :)

That floats on high o'er hill and vales

These flowers lasted through the first April rain, then turned to summer snow!

Rosemary!

David thought these were centipedes when we walked out to the p patch at night!

The squirrels love these chestnuts!

Another alleyside, same old dinosaurs :)

Can you spot the snail?

A Morning Person's Observations #4

The New Sit Spot

The first morning in my new apartment, I sat on the steps on my patio thinking this would be my new sit spot.  Goodness am I excited about that patio, but it would not be a nice place to drink coffee each morning (apparently I'm a coffee drinker now).  There is nothing but wood and concrete, and I heard some birds, but didn't see a single one fly overhead on the day I sat on the terrace.  There are some empty pots for a garden underneath the staircase, so I figured if the landlady didn't mind I could create some greenery to watch each morning.

Then I went to throw out the trash and explored a little in the alley behind my building.  To the right there was the sign of a garden plot.  As I got closer I saw it was actually a ppatch!  There was a bench leaning against the wall, with the perfect spot to sit and watch the ppatch as someone sips on their morning tea, er, coffee.

Spring sunlight in the ppatch

There's a sign with a number to call if you want a patch.  I'm sure the waiting list is enormously long, but I got on the interest list anyway.  However, if I only spending a year in this apartment, never get a ppatch, but still sit and enjoy the setting every morning with my cup of coffee, that will be enough, that will be perfect.

It's Lent and I'm feeling lost.  Since the GED changed, everything at work feels like a different moving part, moving away from the rest of the puzzle instead of coming together.  I'm trying so hard to figure it out, to give the students concrete steps forward with their education, but everything I say sounds like a broken promise.  "No we don't have the practice tests yet," "No you don't have enough credits," "No your old scores aren't saved anywhere."  All of this is out of my control, but it's so frustrating and trying to navigate the pieces has burnt me out.


So, I'm giving up doing too much work and taking on sitting in the ppatch.  I'm giving up going out and taking on cooking long, slow dinners at home.  I'm giving up spending my evenings glued to the computer screen, and taking on long, slow baths, reading more books, seeing more friends, playing more games, and longer nights of sleep.

The ppatch has already given me hopeful signs of spring, I think one bush must be the Indian plum, because it was buds when I first started sitting in February, and now its blossoms are the size of my hand.  They look like hands opening to the sky during meditation.  The chickadees and robins make frequent appearances, talking to one another as they pass through and check me out a little.  Two pigeons, darker than most, spent a flirtatious morning cooing and following each other around the adjoining balconies and gutters.  This is what I love, having a moment in the secret world that is always here, that I tune out when I'm focused on my human schedule.

This morning the crows came and sat on what Ann (a smoker and coffee drinker in the ppatch I met today) says is a chestnut tree.  One held a large twig, the other stared me down for a second, as if to challenge my place in the patch.  I didn't back down and took a sip of coffee without batting an eye.  Then the sun broke through the clouds and lit up the row patches, and the crow accepted me and took off.

The highlight was a month ago, creeping slowly and quietly into the ppatch, trying hard not to spill my tea (back when I still could get through a whole day on tea, sigh).  I looked to the top of the Doug Fir that is on the other side of the fence, but hangs generously over the ppatch.  Often on the bare branch sits a crow or sometimes a robin.  Today there was a hawk!  It had been making an alarm call that I mistook for a squirrel.  After I sat on the bench it stayed a little longer, scouting the situation.  It gave up, possibly thinking I'd scared away any prey.  As justice, it soared away calling out again, scaring away any prey for me.

My hawk identification is horrible.  It was tiny for a hawk, and almost all white on the underbelly.  My initial google research suggests it was a Short-tailed Hawk by the looks, but the International Union for Conservation of Nature says that hawk is keen to stay tropical, so back to square one.  Hope it shows up again and gives me a better look.

A Morning Person's Observations #3

Rolling with Fluidity

I've written a couple times about my new job this year, running a GED program at a non-profit for Seattle homeless youth.  In February, Madden and I moved closer to the city, and Andy joined us.

Back patio, my spring sit spot

Through the spring and summer, I would crawl out of my window onto our back patio for my morning sit spots.  I saw a lot less from this location than my previous spots.  The only natural, permeable space back there is in the garden bed.  My main observations have been of the ants coming to and from the garden bed.

There was a board leaning up against my window, and every night at the same time I heard it rattle.  Finally I fell asleep with the blinds open, and saw a little mouse crawl up it one night!

Starting in October, there has been construction on our apartment building and we're not supposed to

use our patio until February.  I've taken to walking to work some mornings to sip my tea on the way to work and try to naturalize this way.  On several occasions back in the spring, I saw bees tumble out of cups of flowers!

Bee having a snack

We moved the center, and then the new one needed to undergo some more construction after we got all of our stuff there.  Luckily, SFBC took my classroom in for a few weeks so I didn't have to stop teaching so close to the GED's deadline.  It's still been a difficult fall, leaving a construction site at the apartment in the morning to meet with staff at another construction site at work until it was time to go to the church and teach.

I stopped seeing a lot of my regular students, the ones who can still finish before the deadline.  I've broken down from the stress a lot and found myself sleeping and watching TV more.

I've missed living in a natural setting this year.  Living close to Volunteer Park and taking walks there has helped.  I'm moving again in February, and hope to find the perfect spot this time.  Urban enough to get to work and the grocery store with no problem, and some natural gifts incorporated somehow.  Hopefully no more construction!

A Morning Person's Observations #2

In Defense of Spiders

If you don't like them, don't come and visit me.  They are everywhere.  Under the sink in the bathroom, by the trash can in the kitchen, over the doorway to the back patio.  Some of them have spindly little legs and look as gentle as Daddy Long Legs.  Some of them are stocky, striped, and remind me of the Wolf Spiders at Fraser we would trap in buckets, equally harmless in my opinion, but ferociously designed.

My love for living creatures is based heavily on their ability to deplete the environment of mosquitoes.  The more mosquitoes something eats, the more I love it.  Which is why I don't get a creepy feeling around spiders anymore.  I have boundaries with them.  They are allowed in my room, but not in my bed, so anytime they are over or next to my bed they are caught in a cup and removed outside.  They also are allowed in the bathroom, but not in the shower, and go through the same removal process when found there.  I usually do this with grace, but I must admit I can think of at least three times when the spider I have removed seemed big and fierce enough to me that the cup and paper were dropped in the lawn and I ran back inside and closed the door between me and the Aragog (the cup and paper were retrieved the next morning).

For the most part though, spiders are friends.  The trickiest boundary I have had to navigate with them recently has been related to the hammock.  While walking up the steps to the clearing where the hammock lays, both hands full with my tea and cereal, I usually feel a bit of web on my face or hands.  One day, it goes too far.  I walk directly into a spider web and see the culprit scuttling on the belly of my T-shirt.  A lot of tea was sacrificed to the earth, and the spider was flung unceremoniously, but I am hoping harmlessly, as well.

I would like a clear shot to the hammock from the back door, but I always feel wrong messing with spiders outside, since that's their home and I should be the one to adjust the boundaries.  For now, I have gotten better about double checking and maneuvering around the webs, and the spiders have gotten a bit better at building up higher, out of head reach, at least for someone who is 5'2.

Little dreamcatchers

So we figure out how to co-exist, and I take my place in the hammock for a morning sit spot.  Spiders are magical to me, the way the longer you sit in one spot, the more webs start popping into view, seeming to materialize from nothing.  I remember talking to my childhood friend, Mariam, about her Islamic faith.  She told me a story about Muhammad (peace be upon him) being persecuted by a group of angry people.  He hid inside a cave, and a spider spun a web over the entrance, protecting him.  I think about this story as I lay in the hammock and count more and more spider webs surrounding me.  The spider webs are dreamcatchers, trapping all the negative energy in the world, keeping bad thoughts and feelings at bay.

Listening to the Chickadees, I find an additional surprise for the sit spots: slugs mating on the first step up to the clearing with the hammock!

A Blythe Spirit

There is something extremely comforting about doing dishes three times a day in a sink you took a bath in as a baby.  Sleeping in a bed in a room where you once slept in a suitcase.  Walking by a creek you used to dam up for a swimming hole.  Feeding chipmunks you used to swear you could communicate with by squeaking and moving your forefinger like a tail.  I needed this week, to remind me of the constants in life, myself, my personality, my spirit.

Lately I've seen my grandfather around the holidays, when we all come into town for a week.  It's busy,  it's confusing for a man already struggling with his memory.

Being at the cabin with him has been a nice, quiet, calm, refreshing time.  There are still lots of details he struggles with on an hourly basis.  Where did that jam on the table come from?  Where did all of his children get married?

My oldest cousin on the Goodman side, Gwen, started the tradition of creating scavenger hunts for the younger cousins whenever we got together.  One summer, my cousin Jessica and her immediate family were at the cabin at the beginning of the summer.  Jessica left a scavenger hunt for my sister and I, who were coming several weeks later.

It was exciting to do a scavenger hunt when the creator wasn't around, but it did provide some challenges.  There had been a few tenants at the cabin between Jessica's stay and ours, and a few of the clues had been moved or had gone missing by the time we started trying to follow the path of clues.  If the trail ran dry, we'd have to skip ahead a clue or two to find it again.  We ultimately did find the prize,  our names carved on a downed tree on the way to the meadow!

Talking with my grandfather at the cabin reminded me of that scavenger hunt.  I tell him it's a fun game to try to answer  the questions he asks, and use whatever puzzle pieces we have to figure out the answers, or make up our own stories.  (As my grandmother always said, "Never let the truth interfere with a good story.")  He laughs at my perspective on our story creating.  We decide the jam looks homemade, and is a berry neither of us know, so it was probably a gift from Christine who's from California, and it's probably a California berry.  We also figure out where all of his children have been married so far (Winfield, Ottawa, and Madison) by thinking of when they got married and where everyone was at the time.

I am impressed with how well he recalls the stories directly related to him.  How he broke his arm two weeks before marrying my grandmother.  How he parked his car ten miles north of her house, so Uncle Bob couldn't find it during the ceremony or reception, although he looked all over Superior.  How he was horrible at picking strawberries, and learned when he went to college that he was red/green color blind, which still did not impress his dad.  All the different churches he worked at, where he was associate pastor, where he was senior pastor, where all his children were born.

As we drove in the first day and passed the first car on the old country road, we wave hello.  At the same time, we both remember the same moment.  I used to sit in the middle of the front seat of the Great Grey.  One summer I learned about the country wave (you leave your wrist on the wheel but lift your hand in greeting) and the farmer wave (you just lift your forefinger).  I was so amused by that idea I used the dashboard of the Great Grey as my wheel and lifted one finger to each car we passed, which made my grandparents sitting on either side of me chuckle.

Remembering these stories, hearing new ones about my grandfather's life, is reviving me.  My grandfather hikes with me all the way to the meadow.  We go slowly and notice the flowers together.  The main thing he notices, of course, is how much good firewood there is up here.  I tell him my mom and I will walk up and get it when she comes, which makes him laugh.

We get to the meadow, and he decides it might be the last time he walks that far up the trail.  I remember one more story.  About 8 years ago, when my family, my friend Steph, and my grandparents were at the cabin together, my grandfather told us a story about a hike to the meadow he took by himself.  It started with some rustling in the bushes behind him as he walked back.  He finally broke out into a run, which is when a mountain lion jumped out of the bushes at him.  Without thinking, my grandfather stuck his walking stick up in the air, and pole-vaulted the mountain lion across the creek into a bush.  He went back the next day to check out the scene, and saw there were some berries on the bush.  My grandfather ate some of those berries, and they gave him just about the worst stomachache he'd ever had, but he never did find out what happened to that mountain lion.

My mother's reaction to this story: "Dad!  I can't believe you ate those berries!"

A Morning Person's Observations #1

6/12/2012 - First naturalizing in Queen Anne

I heard them this morning, the chickadees!  I'm glad they live on this side of Lake Union too.

slug trail, look close!

As I sip my tea, I look between my feet and see a slug trail that went all over a plant by the back stoop, but the slug was nowhere to be seen.  I hope to find it one day.

There is a gentle coolness in the air, temperature is the low 60s.  It's dry, but feels fresh.  There are partial clouds in the sky.  Basically, Seattle before the Fourth of July.  If I was in D.C. I would swear it was fall and not summer.  My new sit spot is on the back step, below Raffaela's (upstairs roommate) porch, so it's shaded and tucked away in the forest of our backyard.

The chickadees make their namesake noise for me again.  I can hear them and many others, but I can't see any of them yet.  I'm the new kid on the block, and they're not sure if they're ok with me coming out to play.

6/13/2012 - Familiarizing with the neighbors

I was lucky enough to look between my feet, and see the slug this morning!  Somehow it is the ugliest and cutest slug I've ever seen, all at once.

Some of the birds emerged this morning, just for a moment.  I vainly assumed they had come to see me, that after two days I had become a consistent, reliable, and safe presence.  Then I heard Raffaela by the side stairs to her flat.  They had come over because they had been disrupted elsewhere.  Still, once they saw me they seemed curious.  They were probably a type of sparrow.  What one of my college professors, Jay Roberts, would call LBJs (Little Brown Jabbers).  Their brown feathers were a dark, rich brown.  The tail feathers were long and royal looking.

I notice some of the flora characters this morning.  A few Bracken ferns, a Maple tree, Big Leaf I believe.  A few other species I'll need to identify later.  And the familiar morning glory with its beautiful white flowers, crawling all over the horsetail fern with a King Midas touch, choking the life out of anything it comes across.

In the coming weeks, my roommates and I all leave for two weeks, and we return to find Raffaela's bike under the outside stairs, covered in Morning Glory!

6/14/2012 - Nesting Ninja

One of the LBJs made an appearance today, third day in a row and it seemed willing to tolerate me.  The bird looked like a wren to me.  Tiny body with a long, elegant tail sticking straight up.  A white headband cuts across the eyes, making me think of a ninja.

Ninja wren nest

Ninja wren picked up some fluff that looked like dandelion bits.  It shook them against the ground, dusting them with dirt.  I still find it funny the way birds move, such twitchy little creatures.  Ninja wren went to deposit its nest materials in a hole between the house and Raffaela's porch.

I notice today that one of the ferns is bracken, but the other one looks more like Spiney Wood Fern.

6/20/2012 - Naturalizing at Green Lake

I've been staying at Chris' all week, dog-sitting Denali while Chris and everyone are in the backcountry for staff training.  We sat on the front steps this morning, Denali in front of me, just in case the couple across the street walking their toddler tried to attack me (he has some neurotic wolf guarding tendencies).

I've heard naturalists say don't try to do a sit spot with a dog.  This advice makes sense, but I do also like the different dynamics you observe sitting outside with a dog.  The flies were swarming because of a present Denali had dropped in the front yard yesterday that I hadn't cleaned up yet.  The bees also swung by, particularly interested in the purple flowers Ally (Chris' roommate) had planted.  They had giant pouches of pollen hanging off of either side of their abdomen!

E.J. found a dead honeybee once, with a honey bubble still attached to its leg.  She put it in a tiny, clear box, in her car, and I could stare at that bee for hours and the bubble that still hasn't popped.

I try to make my morning sits only about observing, leave the stresses of the world for later, but I can't help but think about all the bees that are dying, and wonder what a world without honey, or pollinated flowers, would be like.

A robin perches on a telephone wire and sends out a call twice.  The robin's ears must be better than mine, because after the second call, the robin flies over George's (the landlord who lives next door) house, presumably to find someone who had answered the call.

Denali and I are done sitting, so we head out on our walk.  We see the rabbits he chased once when I let him off leash in a field before noticing them.  That experience must not have left a lasting impression for the rabbits, or maybe they recognize that he's on a leash, but either way, they barely scooch away as he lunges for them and tries desperately to break my hold.

I head back to my house to get ready for work.  As I sit on the corner of Dexter and Westlake waiting for the 30 to take me to the Seattle Center, the top grass and hay layer beside the bus bench starts throbbing, like a vampire digging through a grave (I watched an episode of Buffy last night), or a critter trying to break the surface (more likely).  The bus comes before I can see what comes out of there.

Chickadees in the Trees

October 8, 2011 10:00a.m. Low 60s and partially cloudy

Last night, the cloud cover in Seattle finally parted enough that the moon shown through.  Then I woke up this morning to sunlight streaming into my room for the first time in weeks!

I made some tea, bundled up, and went outside.  The only patch of sunlight I could find was across the sidewalk, under the Cedar tree by the curb.  I heard the Black-capped Chickadees first, then saw one flitting around the front door, perhaps attracted to the bird feeder Emily Jane puts out in the tree by the porch.

Until now, I've only seen and heard the chickadees by the side of the house, further away from the road.  This was the first they've appeared during my morning front porch sit spot.  From what I could tell, there were two of them.  The first one was pretty bold.  It hung upside down on one of the lowest panels of the house.  Then it flew over to the cedar tree, and perched all over the trunk, upside down, right side up, and finally settled in a branch.  I "psh psh"ed at it and it moved a branch closer.  Its friend bounced around a little further back.  Whenever a car drove by, or someone walked by with their dog, they both flew high into the Cedar where I could barely see them.

I have noticed many naturalists and environmentalists in this area are deeply curious how people got started naturalizing and building a relationship with the environment.  Some naturalists' stories start with a place-based experience, growing up in a rural area, having woods nearby to play in as a child.  Many others stem from having mentors and teachers who were enthusiastic nature lovers.  I've been thinking about my journey as an environmentalist, and am grateful to my creepy memory for the clear moments I can hold onto from when I first naturalized.

I think the Blythe Spirit, our cabin in Colorado, had a lot to do with starting me on this path.  One of the first summers in La Veta I can remember was when I was about 7.  The family was hiking to the meadow, and one cousin wanted a break before we passed the stone wall that supports the hill next to the cabin.  I wanted to keep going, probably mostly to argue with 4-year-old Jack, so Uncle David walked with me.  We walked to the meadow without stopping once, except for a moment around the bend while Uncle David explained his different questions about how the creek had once formed the cliff we were standing on and the one across from it.  At the time I did not understand the concept of rock being shaped by water, and did not immediately absorb the idea he was presenting.

When we got to the meadow, we kept going a little way through the trees at the other end.  We looked back at one moment, and Uncle David asked if I saw a bit of color.  I got excited because I did see a bit of red, it was Aunt Gretchen's shirt and the rest of the family had made it to the meadow!  Before we started back to meet them, Uncle David pointed out the color he had been referred to, which was a butterfly he had seen instead of Aunt Gretchen.  I shrugged off that moment, because again I was eager to brag to Jack and Laura Beth about how fast I had walked.

Photo by Carol Blythe

What's interesting to me about those two moments, Uncle David pointing out the ravine and the butterfly, is that although at the time I am sure I acted disinterested, those tidbits have remained with me to this day.  I vividly held on to that hike, and my perception of natural areas has probably been formed by it.  My favorite thing to do in my free time is to sit quietly in the woods, looking for butterflies or other creatures.  When I am in the woods with other naturalists, I love to talk about how features of the land came to be the way they are.

Experiences like these give me hope as an educator.  I have probably gone for hikes with hundreds of kids, ages six to sixteen.  I have heard more than my fair share of whining, complaining, seen plenty of eye rolls, had kids anxiously ask for "lodge time," to go home, to get out of the woods, to not have to stand quietly for one minute, to not have to listen for the birds, to not have to stop hiking to learn about the plant or tree.  Maybe they will never look back on those hikes again.  But maybe they will hold the full meaning of my lessons somewhere deep inside that will guide them for years to come.  Either way, my journey as an environmentalist allows me to feel blessed to share the potential of this path with others.

Sitting

I've had a few Sit Spots in my life.  While studying abroad in New Zealand, I visited a sit spot twice at Quaker Acres.  As I settled down next to the Peace Pond for the first time, I woke up too late to the fact that I was sitting by stagnant water at dusk.  Despite being eaten alive by the mosquitoes, I liked that spot to sit, and its serene and calm beauty in an obvious way.

Last year at IslandWood we had to do sit spots as a year long project for our Natural History and Ecology class.  We were told to sit for at least half an hour, so that our presence would stop being a disturbance to the natural flow of the ecosystem.  We were also told to visit our spots at different times of day, to see different patterns.  Dawn and dusk were my richest experiences sitting on the decomposing log off the first turn from the Treehouse Loop by the bog.

I want to go out to my sit spot during the evenings more, because on the 20th at three points a large bird, possibly an owl, swooped from one of the trees close to my log down to a tree on the other side of the spine trail.  Unfortunately, these bird sightings happened right as dusk was approaching, probably the worst time to actually see the birds.  What amazed me was how quiet the birds were.  Each time one flew near me, I had no idea it was there until I saw it, its wings made no noise during take-off or landing, which gives me the idea that this bird was hunting. ~Natural History Journal, 9/20/2009

The majority of my IW classmates became slackers when it came to this project, and I was no exception.  In about February I became invested and did five sit spots every other day, connecting my spots to another assignment we had and writing poems about my sits.  Overall though, my sits were sparse and scattered.

To prepare for my IW sits, my summer homework was to find a sit spot and sit two or three times.  This idea seemed ludicrous while running Camp Fraser, but I managed to work in two sits and even found the inspiration for my poem "Words in the Woods."  That spot was the campfire by the Deer cabin; I had a sick camper resting in the cabin, so my main sits felt more on edge than I thought the assignment was asking for from me.

My favorite sit spot assignment was at Earlham College for my class "American Literature and Ecology," taught by Scott Hess.  Scott has worked on pieces of writing calling for a localized concept of nature and wildness, instead of traveling to the ends of the earth and spending resources to find a sublime picture of the wilderness.  Our class focused on dissecting the dichotomy between natural and cultural areas, so perhaps it was fitting that my sit spot was my favorite hill on campus, which was really a drainage ditch.

The prompts Scott gave us for our sit spots were unlike any other way I had been asked to sit in nature.  He asked us to write reflections each week on our spot, sometimes asking us to look for patterns, imagine our spot 100 years ago, bring someone to our spot and reflect on that experience, write in a character voice about our spot, make a piece of fiction set in our spot, interact with our spot in some way.  Through Scott's class, I felt moved to see myself as an active member of the habitat of my sit spot; as a part of that place.  Instead of sitting quietly for half an hour and observing everything I could, I would roll down the hill, climb the tree, walk around my spot, bring friends with me and chat with them through my sitting.  I might not have seen as many birds or mammals this way, but I noticed the blades of grass, the dragonflies, and most importantly I recognized how I felt being a part of that space.

I breathe in the night air and feel my own memories seep in through my mouth.  Memories I scatter each time I come here.  I shake off a few moments of my life, and leave them in the soil.  They nourish the grass as it grows and get eaten by the bugs and fly through the air back to me and remind me of themselves when I least expect it.

Rolling down the hill is hard tonight.  I always give myself up to the hill, let my vulnerabilities down and then the hill takes them as I roll away and I think to myself, "And what?" and listen and hear the hill is speechless so I keep rolling.  Tonight I'm holding back for no apparent reason, and when I don't let the vulnerabilities go they're still inside me as I roll and punch around me with each rotation down the hill.  

That hill remained an important spot for me at Earlham.  Almost all my friends could tell you a time when we went to roll down it together some night.  It was a rare sledding spot during the Indiana snowstorms.  Despite being nestled by two buildings and a parking lot, there were some great views of the stars from lying on one's back at the bottom of the hill after finishing a good roll.

Photo by Emily Schankerman

At my house in Seattle, I got the inspiration from my friend Lily recently to go outside first thing in the morning, instead of turning on my computer and looking at a screen immediately after waking up for the day.  I make a cup of tea, sit in the sunniest spot I can find, and spend fifteen to twenty minutes listening and observing.  I've heard a robin's song, gotten smiles from some passersby, complete avoidance of eye contact of others, said "morning" to the neighbor as she drives off to work, seen the gray squirrels that crawl all over the roof at night, and breathed fresh air.  It's not as isolated from society as my previous sit spots, but after Scott's class, I prefer it this way.  The photo is by my roommate, as an example of some of the wildness one can see from our front porch.

As a lifelong learner, I'm glad to experience the value of this activity with no grade or judgment lingering in the future.  It's my new morning ritual; a way to set the day out on my terms with the world.