My August Sermon (8/30/2022)

I am sorry, but I have not written much lately. I have all kinds of excuses for this; they are all listed here in the following sermon I was asked to do in August. Now I am not horribly religious as some (or all) of you may know, but I am a decent public speaker and I do have a spiritual tendency. So here it is:

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Introduction to the topic:

I was asked today to be part of the team that discusses the subject of “Care of the Soul” or simply put: Self-care. Now I am not a therapist, and as many of you all know from two months ago, I am a trainer. One thing I learned from being a trainer is that to be the best you can be, you need to be clear and not speak over people’s head, you do not only need book knowledge, but also life skills, experience. In addition, you need to be full of passion for your subject, compassionate and not condescending. How can I do that every time and how do I get ready and prepare to teach week in week out? Some of us call it Groundhog Day. Well, I get to the room a half hour early to set up. I sometimes talk with a few of my students that wander in, but mostly I just need to be there, absorb where I am, take it all in, relax and go through that ritual of setting up and getting ready. I center myself.

In the same realm, our UU principles tell us that we have to show compassion in our relationship with others and help our fellow human beings. Boy that can be difficult at times, don’t you all agree? Here too, it will be a heck of a lot easier if we would be able to center ourselves and take care of ourselves first before we set out to help our fellow human beings, the environment and all other things we are passionate about.

Today we will be talking about that. How by helping ourselves be centered, or in other words, by helping ourselves first, we can help others more effectively and potentially make the world a better place.


Homily (or Sermon):

This talk today will be very autobiographically, so hold on to your horses.

As I mentioned in the introduction selfcare is very important to us all.

My wife Donna and I take our dogs Jasper and Radar out for walks at least three times per day. Jasper sometimes acts like he needs some selfcare and does not need a walk, but as soon as we open the door and are ready to leave with Radar he is at the door to tell us: Hey aren’t you forgetting somebody?

We both have a Fitbit and for the past seven years or so we have been in a friendly competition on how many steps we can get per day. It is hardly ever less than 10,000 steps. We tell each other that exercise is good for us, even if our ankles, knees and hips are hurting that day. We claim that it is good for our body and our soul. We have to make those 10,000 steps, darn it.

The story that Patricia just told us shows that while walking may be a great tradition, it may not be taking care of yourself, or helping yourself. Noodles the dog in our story decided he needed a break and wanted a rest, a no-bones snack day. He just wanted to laze around and together with Johnathan his owner they had a peaceful, meditative day at home where they were able to snack and get mentally charged for the next adventures on the road. They just needed to center and by doing so they helped each other.

In the introduction this morning I told you a little bit about myself and how I prepare for my classes. I teach 2 classes 1 to 2 weeks a month at different locations throughout the state. Yes, I had a colleague who called it Groundhog Day, since it we only have 7 or so classes in our portfolio. It would be so easy to start droning and make it boring for the students. But that isn’t helping my students who are required to take those classes. I ask my students to tell me when I start getting boring, because at that point I plan to retire. This is the reason why I have my centering or selfcare ritual at the start of each class. I don’t rehearse my classes, to me that makes it boring, but that mental preparation is important. Donna knows it, there are many times when I come home or call home and tell her: Wow that was a great class, we had some great discussions. In essence it was great for my and hopefully for their soul as well.

Looking through the literature what are some of selfcare category we need to consider? Some psychologists suggest there are five:

1. Physical

2. Emotional

3. Psychological

4. Spiritual

5. Professional

Take these for what they are worth, I really don’t want to go into horrible bosses and obnoxious co-workers. I still have trouble dealing with those at times. The best thing to do there in my eyes is take a that no-bones 15 minutes, remove yourself from what aggravates you and center yourself. I do that by going for a brief walk.

This ties into taking care of our physical self doesn’t it. Yes, we all should take care as much as possible of our physical self. Some can do more, some less. That’s OK. For myself I know that very strenuous exercise gets the endorphins flowing, which gives me that runners high and makes me feel good; although I might have felt like crap when I was exercising.

But what can I or we do for our soul?

Personally, we have had a rough but fun July. Arthur, my father-in-law needed to be moved from independent living to assisted living. Although stressful, that would have been ok by itself, were it not that our daughter was getting married the weekend after. So, we had a very intense couple of weeks. How did we take care of ourselves, how did we center, take care of our souls?

Walking to the front to give my daughter away on her happy day.  We had a wonderful few days and are so happy for the married couple.

We exercise or walk, we have our hobbies, and we have our community, our friends. In other words, we take care of our physical needs, our emotional, spiritual, and psychological selves. Let me explain.

You might have missed us in church. All these activities took place on the weekends, and we were crazy busy, so the UUFP was out. We had our daily walks, one of which is usually around 10 in the evening (a great time to debrief).

Donna has her knitting. As I understand it knitting, depending on the pattern, involves counting and sometimes intricate maneuvers tantamount to meditation. You have to pay attention. During easy projects she listens to knitting podcasts or watches knitting YouTube videos. We obviously do not watch TV. There was a period where Donna was not able to knit and after three days, she was antsy and told me she missed it.

If you have been to a previous talk or sermon by me, you know I am a huge fan of forest bathing. No, that is nothing indecent, but it is just lingering in the woods without a place to go. It is almost the same as meditative walking in the woods, taking in the views, smells, and sounds. Nothing better than forest bathing to recharge the soul.

I also grow bonsai, the other day I counted my trees and I have somewhere around 105 or so trees in various stages of training. I have had some for close to 35 years.

Working on my trees, from watering, fertilizing, the clipping branches, repotting, analyzing them, just talking to them and just being with them is pure meditative to me. In the evenings I watch bonsai YouTubes. Those videos were how I could and can escape at night, center and heal from a day’s work and stress. As Joanne once told me, you have given some of them 33 years of care and they are taking care of you, your soul, every time you are among them.

Other things we do as couple include biking and being on the water like kayaking. At least for us, the minute we are out there, we cannot think of what is going on in the world, our jobs, or in our lives, we can only just enjoy where we are and be in the moment.

Being in the moment is what centering is all about. Being in the moment takes care of yourself, your soul and forgetting about the things around you. Of course, without getting into physical harm. A lot of people use meditation or yoga to be in the moment; when I go to a concert I am in the moment.

Now based on what I told you here this morning we prepared a number of wondering questions for you. Questions to meditate over for a little while. I will ask them and give you a minute or two to meditate over them, to be in the moment with. You do not publicly need to answer them, but if you have the desperate need to tell them in public, I will allow you to do so.

After that we will sing a hymn and then Tara J. will lead us in a short session of chair yoga where she will help us to center ourselves and be in the moment.

I will preface the questions with a short anecdote about myself.

Question 1:

I have already told you some of my practices from Forest Bathing to working on my bonsai:

• Think about what spiritual practices you've found helpful in your own life.

Question 2:

Don’t tell him this, but ever since we moved my father-in-law to assisted-living, he is receiving more care from the facility. I have heard Donna tell him NO over the phone a few times now. Like NO the nurses or help are right there, ask them to help you. I know that in the past I have had a lot of trouble saying no to requests but in my old age it is getting easier.

• I wonder how we can find the balance between saying "yes" and saying "no".

Question 3:

This is what my whole talk has been about so without further ado:

• I wonder how you take care of your own needs so that you can then help other people with their needs.

Question 4:

This and the next question go hand-in-hand so hold on I will ask them both at the same time:

• I wonder how we can best serve others.
• I wonder what else we can do to center the people we want to help.

And Question 6:

• I wonder what other care my soul needs; do you know what care your soul needs?

Conclusion:

I realize that what I told you today was somewhat auto biographical, and as I mentioned, in no way am I an expert in centering myself or even being a balanced person. But boy do I try. Over my life I think I have gotten better at it, mellowed somewhat. But you better ask my wife privately if that is really true.

My philosophy of life is that as a human being we should try to help to make everybody’s life a little better than it was before, regardless of who they are. Very much like what is reflected in our first, second, third, fifth and sixth principles. We can only do that by being at peace with ourselves, and we can only be in peace with ourselves by centering ourselves and taking care of our own soul first.

Blessed be.

Bonsai spirituality (10/14/2021)

A recent bonsai YouTube video that I watched was somewhat different. Peter Chan from Herrons Bonsai was interviewing an ex thug or reformed criminal about his path to bonsai and nature combined with it his straightening out, and finding of religion. Claud Jackson wrote a book about his journey: “From Guns to God.” While I am not going to discuss the book (I have not read it), religion (I am not particularly religious or believe in their or any god, regular readers know I am a Unitarian and more a pantheist), I do have a couple of issues I want to discuss here. This discussion just brought some of these thoughts to mind.

Now I am a great fan of Peter’s videos and instruction, and while this video was not about trimming or working on plants, it was the second or third one that he has done on the connection between the mind (or soul) and our hobby. This one disappointed me a bit and that was because in my eyes, he did not go deep enough. Understandably so? Maybe, Claud is 6’8” and Peter is only 5’7”. Be your own judge and watch it yourself.

Many of you know, I am a naturalist, biologist, a person who strongly believes in forest bathing or Shinrin-yoku. I have written extensively about it and even presented a sermon in my church about it. I actually wrote a draft sermon that compared growing a bonsai to growing a church.  Being out in nature helps me meditate and so does working on my trees. During those times I just live in the moment and lose my perception of time and space. Being a biologist at times I cannot help trying to find a scientific explanation in my mind to the phenomenon that I am seeing or try to identify a plant or a fern that I stumble upon. But that is living in the moment and not thinking about the other things in life.

This was what was lacking in Peter’s interview with Claud in my eyes. They were dancing around the subject and never getting there. For someone who is studying to get ordained as a minister of the church of England I was disappointed by the lack of spirituality during the discussion.

Why the hell am I growing bonsai? It is something I have asked myself many times over the years. Is it a spiritual thing? Probably not; at least not when I started. I was just fascinated by the fact that you could make trees look so miniature. It all started with a visit to Longwood Gardens in late 1977. We were just married, and it was our first visit to the in-laws in Delaware. Longwood has a nice bonsai exhibit and I fell in love with the idea of growing miniature trees. I remember visiting the National Arboretum a few years later and that did it.

My spiritual journey with bonsai started a lot later. It was not until we settled here in Virginia (2000) that I was really bitten by the bug again. I started to take it serious again eight or so years ago. Yes, I had trees ever since we finally decided to “permanently” settle in the U.S. in 1986. As a good Dutchman we collected a few houseplants, and I befriended a guy who ran a nursery and off I went. I still have some of the trees I acquired at that time, although, as I mentioned in at least one of my posts, since I ignored them for some time on top of not knowing what to do with them, you would definitely not know that they are more than 30 years old. For one, I am not going to let you cut them and count their growth rings. However, they did not have YouTube at the time and the magazines and books did not push me hard enough to be that adventurous or extreme in cutting roots etc. Despite all that, I still love to tell visitors that these trees are older than or as old as my daughter.

Whether it is working with miniature nature or walking in big nature, I enjoy it and it all has become somewhat spiritual to me. Believe it or not, I talk to my trees; I tell them what I am going to do to them. Maybe I am going insane, and I am talking to myself, but it is a good way to remember things, thinking out loud. While pruning and discuss choices with myself, it is meditative.

It is not different when I walk in the woods. I love to linger, stop for a second, look at a trunk of a tree, touch it, feel it, see how the roots spread; take a picture of a mushroom, a sign of a symbiont, a perfect union. Now I need to start thinking about creating some bonsai forests. One of my favorite YouTubers Nigel Saunders from the Bonsai Zone is really into that, and he has some really cool forests or landscapes. He put in pathways and imagines people walking through the landscapes. I am still too timid to do something like that, although I have plans with a set of crab apples plants that I have.

Just a trunk of a dogwood tree that I walked by during a hike last weekend.  I love the bark of dogwoods and I am planning to dig up a seedling this winter and will try to grow one in a pot.  Wish me luck.

If you are just starting out on a bonsai journey, on a forest bathing journey, or even a spirituality journey, check these two bonsai guys out. Peter has at least two discussions on spirituality, while Nigel used to take you out on his walks and bike rides through the woods near his home. Nigel would explore trees and landscapes during outings but has not done this much lately. He has been way too busy building a greenhouse or his plant room. Explore my blog posts and check out the keywords root, nature, forest bathing, trees, bonsai, spirituality and alike. Come back, as I mentioned before, I will try to be less political and concentrate more on bonsai, and be more educational, environmental, and spiritual.

The cheapo multi-disciplinarian naturalist (3/18/2019)

I often explain in my workshops that biologists would make the great economists. Or, maybe better that economy and biology are actually very closely related fields. On the first hand, you may think I am crazy, but that will be one of the arguments I will try to make in today’s post. Today’s post is also about the beauty of being multidisciplinary. I do not strictly believe that we all belong in our silos, but that our professions and specializations can benefit a lot from cross fertilization and interaction. For example, in my sermon last year, I argued that biology, or my observations of nature, reveal order, mathematics and rhythm. Nature or biology, I argued also has parsimony, she really has so much more to offer or to teach us than just biology.

Nature offers us:

• Food
• Shelter
• Fiber
• Peace of mind (or sanity)
• Health
• Art
• Wonder
• Spirituality
• And many more benefits

We are part of nature. We come from it and have evolved from it, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. Some may think we have outgrown it, but we all still have that animalistic (or natural) instinct in us, from birth, until we we die. We are created true the animalistic (instinctive or some call it loving) behavior of our parents and when we die, we again become part of nature; we even refer to it in our ceremonies: “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

But there is so much more. The natural world has offered us some magnificent art; it started in the old cave paintings, and then just think of the greats like the photographer Ansel Adams, writers like Thoreau, painters likes Monet, and I am just scratching the surface. Nature offers sanity to the forest bathers, the meditators, those folks who retreat to nature. They all offer nature something in return, their admiration, love and desire to preserve and protect it.

About once a month or so I see that picture on Facebook that offers you $3,000,000 or some crazy price to go live somewhere in nature without a phone and internet for 3 months or some period. I wish it was a true offer, I would jump at it, and disappear for 3 months, or even longer, a half year?

This photograph captures the beauty of nature.  We went for a walk in the woods behind our home and after some bushwhacking we found this little creek meandering through the woods.  Who could not just live here for 3 months (were it not for the bugs, but I think I would even be able to survive them with the proper protection).

Back to what I want to write about today! In my classes I talk about parsimony and how parsimonious nature is. Let’s look at the word parsimonious. It has become one of my favorite words and it means: “the quality of being careful in spending.” You may also call it stingy, miserly, cheap, frugal, tight, or penny-pinching. You get the idea. Not that I live that way, but nature does not waste a thing (unlike most of us humans). If you don’t live as efficiently in nature as possible you have less reserves as your neighbor, something or somebody will outsmart you, out-compete you, hunt you down and have you for dinner. It is a dog-eat-dog world out there and if you don’t do it as efficient as possible you are literally toast or at least the stuff they put on toast!

Nature is very supply and demand oriented as part of this parsimony. If you can do the same thing as your neighbor and use less of the resources available to you, you can literally do more with what is available and out-compete those guys. It is survival of the fittest, of the most efficient, or the strongest. This is the most classic Darwinian concept, but also classic economic model you can find: Supply and Demand.

The German scientist/chemist Justus von Liebig (1803-1873), also known as the father of the chemical fertilizer, developed the “Law of the Minimum.” He figured out that plants (and in his case crops) always had one limiting factor. Once you alleviate that limiting factor, say through fertilization, something else will become limiting (another element or chemical in the soil or something else like water or light). By the way, von Liebig also invented the bouillon block that we use in soup. He was supposed to be a great chemist, philosopher and teacher.

It was around that time that biology really took off, we had Darwin who really figured out this thing called evolution; then we had Mendel who figured out genetics. It must have been an exciting time to live and learn. But both Darwin and Mendel illustrated that there are other forces in play than just biology, or maybe that biology involves economics, mathematics and statistics, just to name a few. Von Liebig had showed it involved chemistry. I always tell folks that I probably came the closest to a religious experience when I studied cell biology and learned what all goes on at the cellular level, or maybe what can go wrong on a cellular level. To think we have all these people and other living organisms running around on this earth, each of which have million of cells, some of which have hundreds of processes going on inside those minute cells, was a religious experience to me. It was absolutely amazing and kind of scary to think that if one of those processes does not work that cell could potentially become a cancer cell. But then I learned we have little organs in the cell that can repair these mishaps and that we even have suicide organelles (or capsules) in our cells and if it really goes wrong, the cells can commit suicide (an interesting concept in itself). This works most of the time, but if not, we grow older and those cells may mutate and could eventually develop cancer. It is all amazingly complicated and it all works; most of the time. But no, I never became overly religious, but I did gain a heck of a lot of respect and love for biology and I retained my spirituality.

As you can see, biology can involve a lot of disciplines, ranging from spirituality to mathematics, to economics to actually life science. I do think multidisciplinary thinking is extremely important. We lose sight of the whole picture by being overly specialized. While writing this post I was going through my old posts knowing that I wrote about using old experiences in development of my classes. It was amazing when I reread some of my posts. There are a lot of reoccurring themes here, and I have always wondered if I label too much. However, this shows my multidisciplinary interests, my scattered brain and my love for knowledge (or the unknown). For example, I am currently studying about the construction of embankments and how to compact soil. This is something fairly new to me, I have learned a little bit about it when thinking about the rooting of plants, but never really about building dams. It is fun, and it will be something new to think about and to teach. Life is never boring this way, and all I can say is: go out there yourself, put yourself out there and don’t be afraid to learn something new, something you had absolutely no idea about; become an multidisciplinarian, we need more of them.

My sermon: Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world (7/18/2018)

It has been a while since I posted something in my blog. For my regular readers, I gave a sermon at the church I attend regularly the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Peninsula in Newport News or UUFP. That took a bit of my time. For some of my friends there and friends in Holland, I promised I would post my sermon on my blog. I will start out with the sermon, followed by the quote from E.O. Wilson’s book “Biodiversity” that I read as a preamble, and the closing words. Regular readers will recognize a common thread in my sermon; for new comers I have an extensive list of labels where you can hunt for more.  It is not great literature but a way for me to express myself.  But without further ado, here it is:

Sermon:

Hello everyone, most of you know me, I am Jan. I’ve been a member of the UUFP since the year 2000. I am a biologist, a naturalist.

My funny accent might give it away, but as a lot of you know, I am not originally from here. I grew up on the island of Curaçao in the Caribbean. As a child and teenager, I spent a lot of time in what was called the knoekoe (the local name for the bush) on the island, taking it all in; just moseying and looking around. One of my favorite things was looking for ball cacti, pulling out their little pink fruit out off the white pads, and eating them. I would also just fantasize about what I saw, about making trails so people could enjoy and appreciate nature more.

This carried on in my adult life, I first worked in international development, and then afterwards I had a 20-year stint as a field biologist. I loved being out in the field, experiencing nature in its fullest. I still do, you can try to take me out of nature, but I do not think you can take nature out of me; it draws me in like a magnet. Whenever I can I will be out there, find a tree I can hug and even kiss and be one with for a few seconds, feel grounded.

Of course, you can take photographs of nature (as I do) or look in photo books, but as Annie Dillard wrote in her essay “Total Eclipse”: “Lenses enlarge the sight, omit its context, and make of it a pretty and sensible picture, like something on a Christmas card.” Being emerged in nature, living and breathing it, is so important. At least, it is to me, and I hope to convince you that it should also be for all of us. Only outside can you touch and feel the trees and the soil; breath in the smells and fragrance and feast on the views. As you can imagine, I really hated to go back to the office to write reports about my fieldwork, especially since it usually meant that my fieldwork would turn it into some subdivision and destroy some of nature's beauty.

Earlier on as a graduate student there was nothing better to take pre-dawn measurements of plants in the desert of New Mexico and then hearing the coyotes howling around me at sunrise the minute the sun hit the area. It was magical; you knew they probably had been watching you all along and you never noticed them.

Later on, as a wetland scientist working in the woods I could not just do my job. Especially when working alone, I just loved to take time out at a beautiful spot and just sit on a log or lean against a tree and observe nature around me for 10 or so minutes.

Field work was not without its dangers. I will never forget the day I was struck by a water moccasin also known as a cottonmouth in Virginia Beach. The snake shot out of the high grass and hit me in the legs. I let out a very loud high-pitched scream. Thank goodness it did not break skin but just got stuck in my pants. But that night, 12 hours later my heart was still racing. The very next day, I did come eye to eye with a timber rattlesnake in the same area. I noticed a beautiful skeleton of a possum and bent down to look at it when I heard the rattle. The rattler just stood there and warned me to back off, as to say “this is my carcass,” so I slowly backed off, turned around and walk a different way.

Did I kill the moccasin that bit me the previous day? Absolutely not! As our 7th principle mentions, we have RESPECT FOR THE INTERDEPENDENT WEB OF ALL EXISTENCE OF WHICH WE ARE A PART; or in other words, I believe that we all have our place on this little blue marble that floats in space and we need to respect it and take care of it and of each other. The snake defended its territory and I stepped in it. I did not get hurt and I know my heart was good, at the time. On the next day, the rattler just warned me to stay away. Not all snakes are bad, not even moccasins. A number of years ago I ran into two that were mating (and they were not aggressive), they were not at all interested in me.

You have to take precautions, during the times I've spent outside, have been bitten by so many ticks and have gotten rocky mountain spotted fever, one of the tick-borne diseases. And let's not talk about all those mosquitoes.

Did all this deter me from ever going out into the woods or nature again? Absolutely not. This was in 2003, and I still go into the woods for work and I still do it almost daily for pleasure. Am I more careful? Naturally, I am getting older you know. But I just love to explore, bushwhack and take it all in.

I think that I suffer from an extreme form of Nature Deficit Disorder. Nature Deficit Disorder is a term first defined by Richard Louv, it indicates the need of people to reconnect with nature at times to regain balance in their lives. Louv contents that a lot of personal inner problems, social problems and inner-city problems can be brought back to the disconnection from the natural environment.

The way I deal with my Nature Deficit Disorder has always been to go out in nature. I guess in the old days when I grew up on that tropical island you could have called me a loner. Being out in nature was my solace, and actually it still does. You could say that I could be considered an introvert. Later on, I learned by way of some psychological tests that I am truly an introvert among other things. However, as an adult I have forced myself out of my shell when I am in public.

Being an introvert does not mean that you do not like to talk to people or that we are anti-social. Every person needs human interaction and so do introverts. However, we introverts also need a lot of recovery time or me-time. For me it is so comforting to retreat into my own world and in particular in the natural world where I can be alone. That is my way of expressing and dealing with this curse of being an introvert.

So, when I am done teaching or interacting with people, my alone time is best spent outside hiking in the woods, on my sailboat on the water or in my kayak. Doing this alone would be great, but with my loved ones is great too, as long as they do not expect me to talk too much. I often just like to be in my own thoughts. However, when I am sailing I am just concentrating on staying on course and not running aground, but even that clears my mind.

I am not sure if he was an introvert, but the famous John Muir who hiked up and down the Sierra Nevada around the 1900s is credited as the person who initiated the Sierra Club, and was the impetus of the National Park Service wrote “the deeper the solitude the less the sense of loneliness, and the nearer our friends”. Muir also wrote: “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” I think he was onto something here.

Earlier this decade Japanese researchers introduced the term Shinrin-yoku loosely translated as forest bathing. No, it has nothing to do with an outdoor shower, although I am still trying to convince my wife that we need one of those too. The Japanese researchers showed that the volatile compounds or phytoncides emitted by the vegetation in a forest, in particular the conifers, lowered the blood pressure and slowed the heart rate of their subjects, and one exposure to these chemicals (or to the woods) could last as long as two weeks.

John Muir also wrote: “Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.” As our friends from Japan found, of all the trees in nature, pines are the highest emitters of phytoncides, those chemicals that are good for you.

Maybe this is why pines have a rich history in mythology. Of course, we use them in our Christmas celebrations and with good reason. Many cemeteries plant pine trees and other conifers as symbols of eternal life, they stay green throughout the winter. Druids in England lid bonfires in Scotch pine forests during winter solstice celebrations. The Romans worshiped pines during the spring equinox festival of Cybele and Attis, while in ancient Greece worshippers of Dionysus often carried a pine-cone-tipped wand as a fertility symbol. Even in Siberia and Mongolia, people there enter a pine forest in silence and with reverence.

Native American people see the pine tree as a symbol of wisdom and longevity. Its needles and sap are medicine that protects people from illnesses, witchcraft, and more.

In the Orient the pines are also associated with longevity, virtue, youth, masculinity and power. The Japanese word for pine is Matsu which also stands for “waiting for the soul of God to descend from heaven.” In ancient Shinto beliefs, gods were said to have ascended to Heaven on a pine tree, where they now reside on a beautiful volcanic mountain in giant or old trees. Pine trees are associated with the New Year in Japan. So much so that many Japanese hang a bundle of pine twigs and bamboo trunks known as a Kado matsu ("Gate pine") on their doors to receive a blessing from the gods.

This almost reminds us of Muir’s quote: “Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world,” doesn’t it?

While I love that quote, and conifers such as pines rule, I would love to expand Muir’s quote to: “Between every two trees in a forest is a doorway to a new world.” I strongly believe there is power in nature as a whole, and not only in pine trees.

For me, it does not matter how familiar or unfamiliar the woods are, every time I step outside into the woods the worries of the world fall off my shoulders; I can retreat into my own world and relax. Early on in my life, in Holland, Uganda, Nepal, Yemen, and New Mexico I was in my happy place when I was alone just strolling around in nature, looking around and sometimes studying the things I saw around me.

What do I look for when I retreat into the natural world? For one, I grow bonsai trees at home and it is great to study the canopy of mature trees in the forest for examples to style my little trees. In my reading by E.O. Wilson you heard me tell you that he considers that there is more order in a handful of soil than in on the surface of all planets combined.

To me nature is full of order; full of hidden patterns, and that is another thing I am always on the lookout for. It is survival of the fittest, parsimony, and full of those patterns waiting to be discovered and understood. That is what I do in the woods.

Think about it, every spring the leaves come back, the dogwoods and the redbuds flower and we have to deal with pine pollen. Let me tell you, I had the worst allergy season this year. In summer months, nature does its thing, I enjoy watching the adult birds raise their young, watch the skinks (or lizards) in our backyard, and just see everything grow. In fall nature is preparing for winter. In winter, you notice things you hardly see other times in the year, like when looking up in the canopy you see that not many tree canopies touch each other. Also, that there is a rhythm on the way the trees branch and the way side branches come off.

In her book: “The Solace of Open Space” Gretel Ehrlich wrote: “Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.” Yes, nature to me is very predictable and it helps me to sort my thoughts. So yes, a new door opens every time I enter nature, I discover something new.

Those snakes, ticks, mosquitoes and other varmints are not going to stop me from going out there. I take precautions, use bug spray, watch out where I step. I need to get out and be one with nature. The tall trees are my cathedral, my spiritual home. That is why all those parallel tree trunks in the forest are so important to me; they are my doorway to a different, a new world. As I said those forests are something we all need, not only for clean air and clean water, but also as a spiritual experience, for our sanity, our health and overall wellbeing. Once I enter the woods I need to become one with it and feel grounded, to touch the bark, feel the tree, like when I was young when I needed to eat those little red fruit in in those cacti. But most of all, I need to get out there and I urge you to go too.

----------------

Reading:

Organisms are all the more remarkable in combination. Pull out the flower from its crannied retreat, shake the soil from the roots into the cupped hand, magnify it for close examination. The black earth is alive with a riot of algae, fungi, nematodes, mites, spring-tails, enchytraeid worms, thousands of species of bacteria. The handful may be only a tiny fragment of one ecosystem, but because of the genetic code of its residents, it holds more order than can be found on the surfaces of all the planets combined. It is a sample of the living force that runs the earth – and will continue to do so with or without us.

Edward O. Wilson
The Diversity of Life

------------------------

Closing (Benediction):

Let us go out now into the sunlight filtered by the pine trees and oak trees. May the subtle fragrances of the woods bathe your body and your lungs. May this all bring you blessings and enhance your enjoyment of life for days to come, until the next time you can return to nature and experience it all over again.

Bless it be.

How do you live your life? (4/12/2017)

I have been following a blogger with the name of Mark Mason for a while. He is a self-proclaimed thinker, writer and life enthusiast. His latest post hit home; he titled it “Life is a Video Game--These are the Cheat Codes.” While Mark drops a lot of F-bombs in his article(s), more than I have ever dropped in my entire blogging career, it still got me thinking.

Mark tells us that in his opinion our life as a video game has 5 difficulty levels:

• Level 1 – Find food; find a bed to sleep in at night
• Level 2 – Know you’re not going to die
• Level 3 – Find your people
• Level 4 – Do something that’s important and valuable to both yourself and others
• Level 5 – Create a legacy

No, I am not dead yet.  But who the hell am I and am I really doing something that is important and valuable to myself and others, or am I creating a legacy?   (Actually, I took this selfie by accident after biking on the New River Trail, but I kind of like it).

That is what got me wondering, “at what level am I?”  This is exactly why this article hit home.  But first, I somehow agree with Mark’s assessment of these levels.  There may be small steps in between, or detours, but when you look at it, these are important levels.

Most of us have no problem reaching Level 1; although walking through downtown Richmond and seeing some of the beggars and in the morning, or when I see this guy sleep in the doorway of this abandoned building.  At that point you just can’t escape the feeling that even some people can’t reach that level for one reason or another.  It is sad that we have no safety net for them and we can't even help them to the next level.  Some people argue that they don't want help, and who knows, some may not.

Level 2 is where things may start breaking down already; many people and particular kids in the inner city are not sure if they are going to survive to make it to the next day or to adulthood.  There is so little future for them and maybe this is why they will join gangs and don’t give a shit about life.  They somehow try to cheat this Level and go to Level 3 and try to find their people in gangs and groups, but actually these groups will most likely drop them like a hot potato (and kill them) when they become a liability or when they are no longer needed.  Not really true friends.  But then what do you do when you have no future or really never think you will be able to attain Levels 2, 3, 4 or 5 in your lifetime?  This is why the “Black lives matter” movement is so important, that should give them more hope and more genuine support you need to get to Level 3.

Last week when I was teaching, there were these four guys who were horsing around with each other.  It was so much fun to see them joke with each other like what appeared to be true friendship.  I fed on that and it made my teaching fun.  They obviously reached Level 3.  But there are also so many fake friends; it reminds me of the “Sopranos” where friends were expandable and you could easily fit them for concrete shoes.  Good, true friendship is hard to find, and from what I understand we guys have a more difficult time with it than women do.  However, it really is that Level 3 where a lot of people get stuck, in my eyes; they never get past that level. 

Even here at work, you see that too many people can never get past Level 2 or maybe Level 3.  They seem to come to work and go through the motions; play the social butterfly; try to please everyone; write reports for reporting sake; worry about writing a good report or looking good to their superior; kiss up; play the politics; you name it.  But in the end the only reason they do it is maybe to be accepted; noticed; fill in something they are missing in their private life or maybe when they grew up; be the boss’s favorite and hopefully get that promotion and a raise.  In the end they think they are doing this for themselves, but at what satisfaction?  In my eyes they compromise their entire lives away and are not genuine to themselves and to others.  They go through the motions in life, make fake friends, and make sure that they don’t miss that bus in the evening to take them home where they can veg out and watch TV or play video games in order to block out the miserable life they lead at work.  When push comes to shove, they have not done anything valuable for themselves, for their friends, for society or the community at large; although they keep trying to convince themselves that they did.  Many people live a life of denial. As Joni Mitchell once sang, they could have been more.

But even in the classes that I teach.  Granted, all these people have to take my classes to get recertified.  However, I make them as fun and interesting as I can, and I get a lot of reviews that tell me I am doing a good job at that.  But I also have a lot of people who sit in the back of the class and as I think about it: just browse porn site on their phones, and don’t pay attention to me what so ever.  They go through the motions because their supervisors tell them they have to take these classes.  They have no ambition to ever make it to Level 5 and maybe not even Level 4.

As Mark writes, Level 5 is making sure that your life mattered when you are dead.

At the end of his blog Mark writes the following (and this is a direct quote):

Good luck Player One. Remember, the game of Life is designed to be complex and confusing. The difficulty is not winning, but knowing what winning itself means. Because that’s the real challenge: deciding what our own life is worth and then having the courage to go out and live it.

I have tried to live my life to the fullest. When we were younger, my wife and I were out there in development work living and working in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, sometimes at difficult circumstances (at gunpoint and under floods as I have described in previous posts). We were taking risks and putting ourselves out there; we were already living in Level 4. Even now, every time I teach, I have decided that I have a successful day and leave a legacy when I am able to truly educate, enlighten and motivate one or two persons in the class of 30 to 40 people that day. For the rest, I am trying to fight for what I believe in, write that book and live a good life. Don't worry, I am not trying to show off, there are times that we all digress and there are times that I only live in Level 1 or 2.  But at least at times I have been up there and it sure feels nice up there.

So again, at what Level am I?  I really don't know, but I'll do my darnest to reach Level 5.  What Level are you and at what level will you be by the time you die?

Who is the Common Man? (1/27/2017)

Partially thanks to an article in our newspaper on how Hollywood depicts the “common man” in movies, followed by a letter to the editor on how Donald Trump is stacking his cabinet with billionaires who are supposed to take care of the common man, have I been wondering who the common man really is, and then also what motivates the common man.

So what does one do?  You ask professor Google what the definition of a common person is.  Common person, thefreedictionary.com defines it as: “a person who holds no title.”  They have all kinds of different items in their thesaurus, a Bourgeois (a member of the middle class), a Nobody (a person of no influence), a Plebeian (one of the common people), a Proletarian (a member of the working class), and (my favorite) a Rustic (an unsophisticated country person), just to name a few. 

In a 2011 article entitled “10 Terms for the Common People” Mark Nichol listed: Bourgeoisie; Great unwashed (I love that one); Hoi polloi; Little people; Mob; Peons; Proles (from proletariat); Rank and file; and Riffraff.  In the comment section readers added some more, British readers added “chav” a word I never heard off but seems debatable, and “the chattering classes”.  U.S. readers added: the Masses, Joe Blow, John Doe, Yahoos, and Plain Jane.  As the outfall of the latest elections maybe we should we add (a basket of) deplorables? 

All I can say is let them eat cake!  Oh no that was Marie Antoinette in the late 1700 a few weeks or months before her head was chopped off by the common people. 

But walking through town in my lunch hour and looking around; am I looking at “the Masses” or “Joe Blow”, or “the Plebeians”?  They are definitively not “rustic”, and it looks like they did shower recently.  But can I call these bankers and business men, common men?  What about all those government employees; and what about those beggars, what are they, less than common?  Who are the common men or the common women and what motivates them?

When you do an internet search on "the common man" you inevitably hit on the speech by by Vice President Henry A Wallace, entitled: The Price of Free World Victory. Wallace had been Secretary of Agriculture and was VP under Roosevelt, during the time of the second world war at the time he gave this speech. While it was an anti-Hitler speech, it obviously touched the common man, Wallace said: "Men and women cannot be really free until they have plenty to eat, and time and ability to read and think and talk things over. Down the years, the people of the United States have moved steadily forward in the practice of democracy. Through universal education, they now can read and write and form opinions of their own." 

Having worked overseas in dictatorships, I have seen what literacy or the lack of it can do; or maybe the lack of credible information to read, to get from the radio or to watch on TV. We were able to compare various shortwave radio stations and compare it to the local news; things the common folks could not do, because they could not speak any other language, at least not those from the foreign radio stations and the relied to the government sponsored  (fed) news. There was fake news everywhere.  We really need to make an effort to keep our press free and resist the notion by some in the current White House that the press is irrelevant (or what they call "the Main Stream Press.") 

The speech by Wallace was so inspiring to some, that composer Aaron Copland wrote a piece of music after it entitled "Fanfare for the Common Man."  The tune was reintroduced to the next generation (mine) by Emerson Lake and Palmer (click here for a YouTube video of ELP).  

I feel that we have lost that in our society, there is no real inspiration any more, nothing that inspires people or pushes them towards the greater good.  We are all inspired against the other; this country has become one of two polar opposites.  I attended the Women's March on Washington the past weekend; it was very charging and inspiring; it was against the new administration and the fear they install in many of us.  I just wish it would inspire all common women and men to set their differences aside; that we restore civility and make sure this new political experiment we are embarking on does not end wrong; these guys have never run a country before.  But let's make sure that we stay informed and by independent, unbiased, unfiltered news sources.

I took this picture at the Women's March and to me it symbolizes what I am trying to say here.  This sign did not criticize the President or even congress but asked (in her own way) for the restoration of civility and trust in human nature.  I have no idea if she was a lone counter demonstrator or a very spiritual person, but her sign was very out of place, but so poignant. 

My past travels in Nepal, weather extremes past and present (I) (1/12/2017)

It has been a crazy weather week (again) this first full week of the New Year.  For us in Yorktown it was somewhere around 11 inches (28 cm), with even snow in Alabama and floods in drought stricken California.  The year has barely started and the weather extremes are raising their ugly heads already, a sign that the climate is changing.

This is what the ponds behind our home looked like during the middle of the storm that dropped 11 inches of snow in our area.  It was actually great to go out for a hike

I saw an article that a climate change skeptic posted on LinkedIn (this is my LinkedIn profile) the other day where a researcher claimed that the temperature had actually gone down 0.3 degrees in the past 1000 years.  It is like anyone can measure that with any tools or any precision, or that we had a tool 1000 years ago to measure the temperature.  However, the skeptics are using it as proof; they don’t want to see what has happened in the last 100 years.  But let’s make sure that we confirm a climate change denier (or skeptic) to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the next four years and let the environment go to hell.  Oh well, I better get of my soap box.

In their 2017 report, the World Economic Forum reports that one of the most likely risks with the most severest impacts on society will be extreme weather events (top right corner).
We know that climate change is the cause of those extreme events.
Interestingly enough those extreme events can be linked to many of the other threats on this graph.

The weather brought me thoughts back to our time in Nepal (I have written at least two more posts where I mention Nepal).  I worked there from late 1981 to late spring on 1983.  I worked in natural resources management in three districts (provinces) that ranged from the lowlands (in Myagdi) to the highlands behind the main mountain range on the Tibetan plateau (in Mustang).  The other district I worked in was Gorkha, the district that was the epicenter of the recent earthquake and the home area of the famous Gurkha soldiers.  This week’s weather brought back all the weather extremes we encountered while living there.

I was working with some yack and sheep herders in the highlands above Muktinath in the Mustang district.  Muktinath is a sacred place and an important pilgrimage site for Hindus and Buddhist alike.  The elevation of Muktinath is 12,170 feet (3710 meters), and I had been working in the pastures around 14,000 to 16,000 feet (4,200 to 4,800 meters), which was challenging in itself.  Getting back to the hotel (a hut with a common sleeping area) where I was staying that evening, I had one of the most mystical times of my life.  Three Buddhist monks were holding a meditation/prayer ceremony in the main room that I was able to watch.  They were chanting … Ohm … reciting sacred scripts in Sanskrit, spinning the praying wheels ringing bells, burning butter, it was amazing.  I was just sitting there sipping Tibetan tea and taking it all in.  It touched me deep inside.

I took a photo of this guy (obviously Tibetan stock) during one of my hikes to Muktinath.  He was sitting on the side of the trail, selling trinkets to tourists who were hiking up to the temples.  I had a wonderful talk with him.  That was the advantage of living and working there, I spoke the language and could communicate with the people in their language.

The next morning though we woke up to an unexpected snow storm.  There was at least 4 inches (10 cm) on the ground already and it was a complete whiteout.  My guide recommended that we get off the mountain and back to Jomsom (at approximately 9000 feet elevation or 2700 meters) as quickly as possible before everything became unpassable and we would be stuck up there for who knew how long.  In those days there was no vehicular travel in these areas and everything was done by foot, so here we set off in a snow storm on a 4 to 5 hour hike down the mountain in heavy snow.  I vividly remember the hike back; it was sometimes difficult to see the trail, but nothing really seriously happened during the trip, but if you have ever hiked in deep snow, into strong wind and heavy snow fall, you would know.  Once back in Jomsom; however, I was literally exhausted, I could hardly move, had a headache, and I could not understand why.  Finally, in the evening it dawned on me that I had never peed (urinated) that day; while hiking makes me thirsty, hiking in the snow storm didn’t, and I did not drink much or any water that day.  Together with hiking in heavy snow, the dehydration and elevation were playing tricks with me and I was in danger of dehydration, and that could set of altitude sickness, or maybe I already had a mild case of it.

That evening in the hotel I just swigged water like crazy and enjoyed the Bollywood movie they were showing in the hotel.  The movie was a rare treat, but me and a bunch of tourists were stuck, snowed in for a day or so until the weather lifted and I could fly out.

On an earlier trip I had met Tsampa Ngawang a Tibetan scholar sitting next to me.  Tsampa and a guy named Pasang Sherpa (who I met later) had joined the famous anthropologist/religious scholar David Snellgrove on his treks and studies through Nepal.  Tsampa and I often spoke about those trips and about Tsampa's interests.  This photo was taken when I took my wife (and dogs) to Mustang and we visited Tsampa and his wife at their home up in the highlands (a remote village in the back of the Annapurna at around 10 or 11,000 feet).  We still own prayer flags, the printing block that Tsampa carved to print them and a publication that he wrote.  Also shown in the picture is their young child and our "guard" (the project insisted we had a Gurkha guard) Bim Bahadhur.

This episode taught me a valuable lesson: you can even get dehydrated in a snow storm!  Next time I'll write about how we were impacted by the monsoon in Nepal, by flash floods and landslides.

Nothing is permanent (7/25/2016)

Buddhism teaches us that nothing in this world is permanent and I was so strongly reminded of that a week or so ago during our visit to Pittsburgh, PA that I have to dedicate this blog post to it.  It had been a while since I visited that city, I spent some time there in the mid and late 1990s for work, but this visit was to say hello to our daughter and to my wife's brother and family.  It was there during our visit that I was reminded of the impermanence of our existence on this planet.

Particularly on day two of our visit when we decided to stroll through the Allegheny Cemetery the final resting place of now more than 124,000 people, visited a few museums and ended it all with a visit to Randyland.

These lovely ladies were most likely models at some plush lady's fashion store; however, even their status was not permanent and they have "fallen from grace" and become a vignette at a roadside attraction called Randyland in Pittsburgh

Call us weird, but it is such a nice, quiet place to walk through a cemetery on a sunny Sunday morning.  Maybe a strange way of expressing my spirituality, but is gives you a nice combination of nature and culture.  But as I mentioned in the beginning of this post, if there is something that reminds you of your impermanence, it is a cemetery.  Naturally, death surrounds you, but even there, people erect all these monuments as "permanent (?)" memories to themselves or to their heirs and relatives.  However, even those monuments slowly erode away, and that was what struck me the most during our visit.  Those monuments were not as permanent a hoped or expected.

This must have been beautiful when first placed.
I assume this was a child's grave with a baby resting
on a pillow.

The writing on this monument is almost completely
eroded away

I wonder who was buried here

Things were often not as they seemed.  

This statue may look intact, but was in 

poor shape when examined from the front  

(below).  But she is from 1859 and had to  

withstand a lot of air pollution and inclement 

weather.

In other places nature was slowly taking over 

as we see below.

This is the front of the statue above

Subsequently, the museums we visited included the Center for PostNatural History; what could be more appropriate after looking at decaying monuments to the death.  PosNatutal History refers to the living, the Center deals with life we humans have created or at least altered using genetic engineering or selective breeding; the way "we have messed with nature." (Normal life is not permenent any longer we can mess with it).  You step into the Center and you are welcomed by a stuffed goat that was genetically engineered to produce protein that makes strands of (very strong) spider-like silk instead of milk from its utters (the Biosteel goat).  Ordinary goats are now no longer permanent, we humans will monkey around with them.

While expensive the "Mattress Factory " fits right in with the idea of impermanence.  It is an interesting place to visit, if you are ready for a different modern art experience.  I am sure that some people will call it a waste of their money, but I truly enjoyed it.  Being an old mattress factory there is an air of impermanence, but also an air of re-purposing and breathing new life into things, and the picture below says it all.  I took this in the museums restaurant.

Outside in a corner of the parking area is an area where it looks like a bunch of old stone statues have been dumped, discarded.  We just enjoyed sitting there and looking at them.  We had no idea if it was intended, but it did give me that feeling of impermanence again.

Back to Buddhism.  It appears that Buddhism recognizes five processes that we humans have no control over (although we desperately are trying to).  These are:

1. Growing old
2. Getting sick
3. Dying
4. The decay of things that are perishable, and
5. The passing away of things that are likely to pass

Don't you love number 5?  It is all encompassing isn't it?  (I borrowed them from this website).  Early Buddhist tell us that nothing in this world is fixed or permanent; "Decay is inherent to all component things" declared the Buddha.

I was so amazed when the Taliban in Afghanistan blew up the Buddhist statues at Bamiyan and how the true Buddhist reacted.  They were so matter of fact about it, like "nothing is permanent."  Nothing at all like my father who got angry when my wife accidentally broke his favorite glass just a few months into our relationship; something my wife still remembers.  Nothing is permanent, I still have to remind myself of that so now and then.

There were other signs or occurrences of (sometimes pending) impermanence on our trip, some of which had to do with human relations some of which were in art or science.  None should be mourned, all should be celebrated and revered.

Sailing meditates me (Any open water, 6/28/2016)

One of the books I am reading discusses the healing power of water; Wallace Nichols describes in his book Blue Mind: "The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected and Better at What You Do."  It is  a fun and and fascinating book in which I often see myself.  Nichols' book has a similar theme as Richard Louv's books on Nature Deficit Disorder in that Lowe talks about green nature and Nichols talks about blue nature.  But regardless, whether it is the greens or the blues: nature has it.

A picture I took earlier this year on Catalina Island in Maine.  This picture captures the blue and the green that are so important in my life.

What struck me in one of the passages in Nichols' book was his statement about how someone mentioned that once you are near water you do not need to meditate, but that "water meditates you."  I found that a profound statement and it stuck with me.  If you read my previous post <here> where I wrote about when I visit the beach, how I can just sit in the waves for hours; let the water wash over me; forget everything; live in the moment; wait for the next wave; yes, empty my mind; and let it be. It kind of sounds like the definition of meditation to me.  I don't do it consciously, the water does it for me, the water meditates me.  Truthfully, being in nature often does that for me too (I write about it <here>).  Probably less so, because I have to pay attention to what my dogs do, and keep up with my wife who walks faster than I do (we need to get the heart rate up, you know.  Honestly, there is a time for that too.).

I took this picture of a boot at a mooring buoy in the York River some time ago, and I am not sure if I shared it with you already but scenes like this, or doing this, meditates me. 

I was discussing this concept of water meditating me with a good friend at church the other day.  Doc Robin is a band leader, self proclaimed shaman and the leader of the Earth Rising Community in our Unitarian Church.  "I often think that church interferes with my spirituality ... The spirituality that I can get from nature", he quipped when we discussed the concept of nature (or water) meditating you instead of you meditating in nature (or on or near the water).  So there is something to it; being in nature or water, or being able to see it (even in pictures) is good for you, it heals the body and the mind, it lowers anxiety and lowers the blood pressure.

Last week I experienced this again when we went sailing.  You really cannot think about much else when being at the rudder and trying to maintain course and keeping the wind in the sail.  The winds were around 15 knots, which were fairly strong for our small 25 foot boat.  Nothing dangerous, but you need to keep attention to what you are doing, stay in the moment.  Yes, there were dolphins, birds and wonderful weather, but just looking backwards or not paying attention for a few seconds results in a course change, loose the wind out of your sail, or maybe get too much. Even occasionally looking on my tablet (GPS) to see where we were resulted in a course shift.  It could also cause your boat to come about or to gibe.  You had to be in the moment.  I really could not think of anything else that was going on in my life than being right in the moment and concentrating on my sailing, staying on course and reading the wind and the water.

You want to see two people experiencing flow?  Here you have it!  My wife and I look like we are truly enjoying ourselves and I am concentrating on keeping the boat on course and properly into the wind.

Granted, I do not have an autopilot as many people I know have on their boat.  I am not sure if I want one.  I know it would be nice when I solo sail or need to do something in a hurry, but in the past when I sailed on a friend's boat with autopilot it felt that I somehow lost that intimate touch with the water and the wind.  It was great to be on the water and I loved it; it was so much better than being on land, and of course you always have to pay attention, but still, I like the rudder in my hand.  Granted, I have not sailed in my own boat for longer than 4 or 5 hours at a stretch, so time will tell.  On top of that, I always have someone to take over when I have to take a pee-pee break.

After reading Nichols I realized that in reality, our sailing trip "meditated me", there was no time for distractions.  Mihály Csikszentmihálályi describes this as flow.  Flow is an interesting concept that I learned about from a book that he published in 1990 under the same title (boy that was a long time ago that I read that book).  When you are in flow, you are completely absorbed in and energized by what you are doing (no television watching does not count).  Healing at 15 degrees or more, with 15 knot winds and thoroughly enjoying yourself, not thinking about anything else (as I show you in the photograph above), now that is flow.  Kayaking through the marshes, looking at birds and snails hanging on to the marsh grasses is also flow.

I took this picture while kayaking this weekend of all the snails hanging on the the smooth cord grass (Spartina) during high tide.

Think about it folks, get out there, let nature meditate you!  Blue or green, it it good for your physical and mental health.  Go with the flow!

We went kayaking this past weekend.  Another advanture in the blue and green.  My wife took this picture of me, she really had to call be a few times to get my attention and take this picture.  I was absorbed by being out there in it.

Newport News Park (10/19/2014)

Home in Newport News Park again.  The leaves have not yet turned, although they are on the verge.  It is amazing how we are two to three weeks behind the rest of the state.  This serves as evidence that we have such a long varied state, as I often mention in my classes.  We go from the coast and coastal plains to a place like Highland County which is the county with the highest average elevation on the east coast.  Yes, there are higher locations, but still that place is high and cold.  Being a bit of a nature geek, it really is fun at times to make the drive from Yorktown all the way to Abingdon, which is about a 6 hour drive (370 miles) and you are still in the same state.  You see all kinds of vegetation types, rock formations and even birds.  The first time I traveled to the hill from the coastal plains I was amazed to see all the plants I was so familiar with when we lived in Cincinnati.

Back to Newport News Park.  Sunday we took a 2 hour walk.  We went out our back yard into the park, walked all the way on to the Yorktown Battlefield and then followed a trail that take you by a swamp, a heron rookery, an area with huge trees with a pawpaw understory that almost looks like an old growth forest, and Grafton ponds.  You can see forested wetlands, ephemeral forest streams and ponds and all kinds of things that delight the soul.  This is my kind of spirituality!

On our walk we all the sudden noticed these green patches of green moss with bright orange mushrooms popping out of them: nice and contrasting (I know I recently did a mushroom post, but here is another one).  After teaching plant evolution at the college level, I am always hesitant to call this moss; a lot of these green patches may actually be the sexual phase of a fern also known as prothallus.  I experienced this first hand: I try to grow bonsai and here I thought I had a nice moss cover on my soil, until they all turned into ferns and my pot is covered by ferns.  Anyway, this is a picture of the moss.  I am also entering it in Cee's weekly photo challenge and this week’s theme is green, kind of a strange subject for fall, but so be it.  

One from last weekend, chanterelles popping out of moss