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Appreciating the Beauty and Wisdom of Nature

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Storytellers and Swimmers

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I cannot begin to count the number of days in my life that have slid by in a blur. Some were in the self-centered days of early childhood when as children, we concentrate on getting our needs met and learning about the world. Others were in the extreme busyness of going to graduate school while juggling the activities and needs of three kids. Still others were once again in self-centered mode when pain could not be relieved, and my world shrunk down to cocoon-size in an attempt to manage the overwhelm. I have no negative judgement of those times—we do what we have to do in any given situation. But because of plenty of those blurry, constricted times, I am very aware of the times that are sharply outlined, slowly delicious, and wonderfully expansive for my mind-body-spirit freedom.

A good way to discover that mind-body-spirit freedom is to find some water, trees, and wild sky to park yourself in for a few days. The ‘agenda’ becomes play in the water, hike to the hill-top, and watch the moon rise over the trees. The process originates from our senses—noticing what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. And all of the feel-good sensing and activities are grounded in our bodies, memories, and soul by sharing them with people we love who love us. It’s a win-win-win.

One of the first sounds I heard was a loud, chirping/cheeping chatter. It sounded like a much louder version of the baby chicks we used to house on our back porch until they were big enough to move to the chicken coop. A pair of Osprey sat in a haphazard nest in the dead top of a Pine tree and told their story to all who could hear them.

The water the Osprey overlooked and fished from was clear and cold. Red-stemmed Water Lilies floated on the surface like silver coins, along with the silver star reflections made by the afternoon sun.

Yellow Pond Lilies and Northern Blueflag Irises decorated the water and shore with their Summer colors.

A Painted Turtle had crawled up on shore and dug a hole with its sharply-clawed hind feet in order to lay eggs. Our presence interrupted those plans.

One of the common foods for Painted Turtles is Dragonfly larvae. They live in the water through numerous molts, then crawl out of the water, learn to breathe air, shed their skin, and emerge as an adult, winged Dragonfly. A larva shell is stuck to the bark of this fallen log. (right in the middle of the picture) A new Dragonfly flies away!

Freedom is often depicted with the image of a butterfly that has completed its metamorphosis from egg to caterpillar to larva in a cocoon or chrysalis to adult butterfly. Freedom to develop, nourish one’s self, grow, incubate, isolate, change, and fly.

Another resident bird of the lake can sing a person to sleep in the evening as the western sky still holds the day’s light. The Common Loons also woke me in the early morning with a flurry of calls and a swimming/flying routine I called ‘motorboating.’ I wasn’t sure if they were doing their morning exercise or if this activity was for another purpose; I did notice their calls seemed more vigorous than usual.

Then I saw another lone Loon in a different part of the lake, so perhaps they were defending their territory.

Rocks are the hold-in-your-hand or hold-up-your-feet entities that make a person know what gravity is, what sun-induced warmth is, and what eons of history are in this place. Lichens and moss are the writing that tells the story.

Like a foraging Black Bear or a hungry Gray Jay, I browsed through the brush of Wild Blueberries growing in the scant soil over the large rocks. They were just beginning to ripen, so pickings were precious and few. Not so with the Juneberries on the shrubby, thin-branched trees—they were ripe and abundant and oh-so-delicious!

The smell of campfire smoke is like a signal to relax, prepare some nourishment, eat slowly and laugh often. Usually only one or two people of the group become the fire-tend-er; others take care of food, clean-up, and equipment—there are shared responsibilities even when time is slow and relaxation is the goal. As evening smoke drifted up into the calm sky, a beaver swam in circles in the lake—again, it seemed like he was doing it for fun, for the pure joy of movement. At one point we startled him, and he slapped his tail on the water with a loud ‘crack’ and dove out of sight. But soon he was back to swimming his laps. We saw him swim to the shore where a bright green branch of leaves grew or lay in the shallow water, and he nibbled and nibbled his post-workout snack until it was almost gone.

Late evening and watching the almost full moon rise above the trees and reflect on the water—I wonder if these moments could get much better. It’s a ‘savor-moment’—it makes me feel like everything is going to be okay in a time when so many things make it feel otherwise.

Then morning comes after a Loon-call-filled night. Mist from a warm day, cool night floats above the water. Reflections on the calm, still water give us a slightly different view of reality, expanding our minds.

We all go through constricted times in our lives when facts and feelings are blurry. Pain, whether physical or emotional, is a constrictor. We don’t usually have the capacity to do much beyond dealing with the very real but usually distorting pain. Looking back to those times in my life, I realize there were negative consequences to my being in the cocooning pain, but there were also gifts to be had and lessons to be learned. Extreme busyness also tends to blur the perceptions and memories of a given time. Both pain and busyness are integral parts of Life. We won’t escape them, but we can cultivate more feelings of freedom. Being in the arms of Mother Nature, listening to the Loons and Osprey, seeing the full moon rise over the trees, smelling the campfire, tasting the Juneberries, and touching the warm rocks all expand my mind, body, and spirit. I feel like I could fly. I want more of that.

Christmas Butterfly

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It’s called the Hill of Life. It’s an entry point to the Barton Creek Greenbelt in Austin. The Greenbelt is composed of miles of trails, limestone cliffs for climbing, swimming holes (when there’s enough water), and ‘greenery’ that follows Barton Creek as it winds through southwest Austin. The Hill trail descends 300 feet in less than half a mile on a limestone boulder and gravel path surrounded by Ashe Juniper trees. (One of their many common names is Brake Cedar!) The Hill of Life is judiciously called another name—‘The Hill of Death’—by some who use the hill for the challenge of training for running or biking.

It was Christmas Eve afternoon, so there were not many people on the trail. I was experiencing a mild case of season dysphoria after leaving snow and cold in Minnesota and then hiking in temperatures in the high seventies in Austin. I do not associate Christmas with sweating.

Going down was fairly easy—just watching our steps on the rocks. Once we got to the bottom of the cliff, we arrived at the clear, burbling Barton Creek. The water was warm enough for Chris to wade in (what?!) The trees in Texas are a funny combination of those that lose their leaves for ‘winter’ and those that keep them year-round, like the Live Oaks. The large Sycamore trees still had some lime-green to brown leaves clutching their branches, while others had fallen to the ground.

A creek-side tree had grown in a circle—an interesting, intriguing tree to look at, to focus on—but then being able to look through the hole to the creek, to the water, to the pebbles under the clear water.

Emily knew the way to another waterfall through an open prairie meadow punctuated with spikey green Yucca plants.

We could hear the waterfalls before seeing them, then walked to the pool beneath the falls where a ‘buddha’ stump sat calmly in the sparkling water. (I may have been the only one who thought it looked like a buddha.)

We wanted to walk out to the rocks by the falls, and from a distance we saw a bike-rider carrying his bike from the rocks to the bank. When we got to the crossing point, all I saw was a small log lodged between two trees. I turned to the biker and asked how he had walked that tightrope with a bike! He pointed to another log (maybe we should just call them branches) that was lodged in the trees above the ‘walking’ one. ” Hang on to that one,” he said. Ohh-kay, here goes…

Success! When standing on a bridge or on the ice or on a rock in the middle of a stream or river, it gives a person such a different perspective from standing on the bank. I feel like I am part of the river. I look upstream to the water’s ‘past’ where it has flowed around bends, pulled soil from the banks, and swept past sun-logged turtles and other creatures.

Then I look downstream to the water’s ‘future’—where it will flow in some of the same ways as its past. But there is always something new and different in its path.

Standing on the boulders that create the ‘falls’ and watching the water run and fall over the sides, doing what it is meant to do, brings me to the present moment—present, yet ever changing. And then this Northerner, on my long journey away from the cold and snow, sees a Christmas miracle…

…a butterfly perched on the same rock I’m standing on! A Christmas butterfly!

With some Christmas Eve meal preparation to be done, we decided to leave the river of life to climb back up the Hill of Life. It was a different story. I was thirsty, hot, sweating, tired, and in total understanding of the alternative name—and I was just walking! (We did see a handful of people running past us. I wanted to applaud them.)

The Hill of Life and The Hill of Death are the same hill. One and the same. The circular tree and the water beyond it are bound together in the same way. The river’s past and the river’s future are both part of the present water in which we stand. It is actually mind-boggling in its simplicity and its complexity. How we name it or look at it (or through it) or think about it depends on what we experience. Going down the hill, I could affirm the Hill of Life name from a smug point of view. Coming up changed my tune. Even if I was focusing on the life-affirming qualities of walking up that steep hill, I was still out-of-breath and tired. We cannot think away some realities. Some people are always walking up the hill.

I think our challenge is to make sure we walk both ways. We experience the sweaty climb and the downhill breeze. We experience the peacefulness of the still water buddha and the risk of the tightrope over the rushing water. We look closely at the tree and beyond at the river. We carry our past deliberately and lightly and look to the future with hope and excitement and relish our lives in this present moment. Simple and complex—just like a butterfly.