Restless

Last month I made my first iMovie as part of an assignment for my Ecological Thought class.  (Watch it here).  The assignment was to "make a visual essay about sense of place", so that's what I did.  It's about rivers, and more specifically my connection to them, particularly the rivers of East Middlebury and Ripton, VT.

Well the other day I was able to sneak over to the new family swimming hole all by my lonesome. (!!!) I managed to wedge myself against a flat rock, and sit, half submerged, letting the water flow over me.  And I did some thinking. (Imagine that!)  And I think I figured it out, a little bit.

I am a person constantly in motion.  If it's not my body, it's my brain (or my mouth, or all three, and not necessarily in a coordinated fashion).  I don't do well sitting still, and listening isn't always active enough for me.  I do better in workshops or activities, rather than lectures.  I can't sit through a movie very often, and maybe the reason I leave so many messes in my wake is so that I have something to putter around and clean up.  And I've recently discovered that I can focus on computer work better if I'm stationed at a 'walking desk' (treadmill with desk platform).  I have way more going on in my life that should be humanly possible (or sane), but I like it that way.  I just can't sit still.

Perhaps this is why meditation has always been so tricky for me- both body AND mind have to be quiet. No way.

But sitting in the river the other day, I Realized Something.  As I sat there with the water flowing over me, I felt at peace.  I could just sit there, and I could almost empty my mind (if it wasn't for thinking about how empty my mind could be!)  It was the water that was moving, but it was enough to make me feel right.  I felt as if I could sit there for hours...well, maybe not that long, but for at least 5 minutes.

Perhaps I should recreate this experiment while floating in a lake.  I think it was the current, but maybe it was the water...

Redux

Well, hello there.  It's been quite some time, I know.  There are now three children, two cats, two dogs, two grandfolks, and seven chickens in our nest, now nestled (ha!) in the Green Mountains.  The times they are a-changin'.  This blog will now be used to begin to spin the threads that emerge, perhaps to be woven into more later.  Or not.  Though I'm on a social media hiatus, I still tend to think in status updates.  Maybe these musings will amount to something more than a simulated social encounter if I pull at them here instead.  Or not. Whatever.

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There is something very feng shui about living at the end of the road.   In meditation, one visualization involves observing the river of your thoughts, and letting them flow by you, rather that hanging on to them. Everyday life out in The World seems a lot like this river to me.  People come and go, here and there.  Purchases are made, conversations happen, plans are made.  It truly is a hustle and bustle.  But here at the end of the road, it's almost as if we are removed from the river of everyday life, retreating to my island. Cars do not approach and then pass my home, on their way to and fro.  When you arrive at the end of the driveway and tumble out of your car (for a car is pretty much the only way to get to the top of this little hill), you are in retreat; parked at the oasis. The river may be flowing, but not here.  Here, we just are.

Wendell Berry talks about the evolution of highways, and how these roads take travelers past a place, not through it.  The paths that folks once traveled through the woods, through the fields, allowed a deep connection to place.  Now we speed across a landscape often without even seeing it. Living at the end of the road, however, gives a sense of having truly arrived.

Insulated by forest, our little slice of nirvana envelopes us.  Here, we are alive, and we live with plants, wild things, creepy crawly critters, dramatic weather.  With each other.

It's kind of funny how you have to remove yourself from "real life" to really feel alive.