Wren wouldn’t stop licking her forearm where she got the IV during her dental, so last night I had to wrap it. It was quite the struggle, involving a medicated wipe, ointment, gauze, vet wrap, and me briefly holding a dog jerky treat between my teeth. She resisted, walked afterward like she had a thorn in her paw, kept trying to lick off the wrap. Once I got her in bed for the night she settled down.
In the mornings if she gets up before me I don’t even open my eyes, just pat the bed, and she jumps up and rolls onto my hand or curls up in the crook of my arm. This morning I patted the bed with the back of my hand, and she did something she’s never done before. I felt her little paw settle softly in my palm. She lifted it and set it down again like a feather. Moving only my fingers I felt the bandage down around her ankle and gently slipped it over her foot. She flung herself down and curled up on top of my hand.
Today she got ointment and the Donut of Protection, and it was much easier. Neither sore nor donut kept her from her job at the pond.
For lunch today, fresh bread and homemade tomato soup from the freezer. I’m grateful for a tip I got decades ago that avocado is the perfect garnish for tomato soup.
I’m grateful that I’m still meeting old trees for the first time sometimes when I walk in the woods. I noticed this piñon from a distance the other day and assumed these were branches broken down over winter. Today we went to investigate and discovered that they’re growing down like a full skirt, having bent when young in deep snow and kept growing that direction. Bent, not broken; resilient.
Today I’m grateful for spending time in the forest. After a walk shortened by muddy conditions, I carried a lawn chair out into the trees and simply sat for awhile. Wren snuffled around amusing her nose, nibbling juniper berries, playing imaginary games; I sat and listened and looked; I breathed clean spring air.
I got back into the fray today, catching up on Today’s Edition with sound advice for sanity, making calls to my Senators, reading a few specific articles including this one about the thousands who demonstrated at state capitols yesterday across the country. But I paced myself. The day started with a member of Telesangha who lives in DC telling me that most residents in his building are federal employees who are panicking. So I led a meditation in which I repeated some sound advice recently shared with me from a talk by Oren Jay Sofer, on how to deal with news overwhelm:
1. Do at least your minimum daily requirement for your body’s wellbeing, including exercise, sleep, and eating well.
2. Ask yourself: Am I nourishing myself? This is essential. What gives you joy and replenishes you, emotionally, socially, and/or spiritually? Include this in your life.
3. Set limits on your news consumption. (I would add, turn off all news notifications/alerts, so that you choose when you see the news.) Not only set constraints, but take in news intentionally. Ask yourself:
Why are you seeking information and what needs are are you trying to meet?
What specific areas of news do you need to follow?
What sources of news and info are you consulting?
4. Action relieves anxiety: so being engaged, taking action in whatever ways are meaningful to us, helps us deal with our angst.
5. Practice with Equanimity. Don’t suppress your responses and emotions, but learn how to feel them without feeding them. Your feelings reflect your values, so use those feelings to clarify your values, hold true to your values, and act in alignment with them in all areas of your life.
As I wandered through the woods I thought about how many of the Usurpers’ edicts have already been challenged or held up by the courts, by protests, and by legislators; and, how many outrageous pronouncements have already been diluted or walked back by the Usurper in Chief. We don’t really know what’s actually happening. The sowing of chaos is an intentional strategy to overload our cognitive capacities. As Hubbell writes, “Not everything that Trump and Musk have announced will actually occur or will be easy to implement. And we will have time to resist, fight back, slow walk, and seek injunctive relief from the courts. We can blunt some of the damage but cannot prevent it all. Still, we must do our best to protect as many people and programs as possible.”
In another post he points out, “Do not collapse the future into the present moment. The future comes at us one day at a time no matter how much we worry. The invariant pace of time gives us space and opportunity to plan, react, and adjust. Find community. Support others in distress. Lead by example….” And so in addition to Sofer’s advice on avoiding media overwhelm, I would add, just pause… When you hear or read the latest outrage, pause and breathe. Don’t react from your gut right away: that will quickly wreck your gut. Take a breath, wait for followup information to determine the actual urgency (and truth) of the situation, and then determine whether and how you can in alignment with your values and your abilities. And do not forget to nourish yourself so that you have the energy to engage in resistance.
Today’s cheese sandwich: chicken, potato chips, romaine and havarti, with mayo and mustard on light rye. Very nourishing indeed, along with the quiet time I spent eating it and reading a fine Irish novel. Then, back to work saving the world, one meditation at a time.
Rebecca Solnit wrote the day after the election, “They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.“
Joyce Vance writes another excellent newsletter that gives wise and helpful legal perspective and interpretation on the coup and its ramifications, which she ends with the phrase “We’re in this together.” There are SO MANY informed and determined defenders of democracy out there working on the front lines. You and I do not have to know everything or do everything. I am one among many, and we are strong and resilient. More will join us every day as their lives become uncomfortable. Anything we do that is helpful, or kind, or compassionate; that is wise, that is true, that stands up to oppression and corruption, ripples out into the world in ways we may never know. Thinking about this, I recalled a poem I wrote years ago, early in my mindfulness journey. What we do matters.
It was a pleasant morning, with a latté, a good story on the kindle, and a slice of potica. But there was sorrow in store.
Looking east toward the mountains the juniper looks tattered but possibly salvageable.
A juniper has stood by my front gate for hundreds of years longer than there was a gate. A couple of years ago a large limb broke off in a heavy snow, and some weeks ago a few more limbs broke in a similar heavy, wet snow. A remaining limb had already died. It was a hard decision, like putting down a dog whose last legs have gone out from under him. What little life the tree still held would not last long, might well come down in the next storm.
Looking north the extent of the damage is more visible, and it’s clear the one remaining living trunk will break before long.
So, grateful for a friend’s recommendation, I called Paonia Tree Service, and they were able to come out just a few days later. I spent some time before they arrived hugging the juniper and saying goodbye.
Cameron arrived with a warm smile, empathetic, and eager to help. He assessed the tree, positioned the chipper, and set to work. I watched from the west window, sad but sure.
He moved efficiently and gracefully, cutting smaller limbs first and dragging them to a pile out of the way, a few times shutting down the saw and feeding the pile into the chipper, which blew out an astonishing stream of chips and sawdust. As he moved around the tree he effortlessly trimmed, chipped, and cut larger limbs into cordwood lengths stacking them in front of the long gate.
When he was down to the main trunk, he cut three disks about two inches thick as I’d asked him to, so that I can sand and polish them. I don’t know what I’ll do with them, but it’s my way of honoring the tree. Since he could not cut the trunk off at ground level (which would have allowed for a handy parking spot), I asked him to leave it tall enough so that anyone pulling in could see it and avoid running into it.
I look forward to sanding, polishing, and oiling the stump come spring, and then counting the rings.
I imagined I might set something ornamental on it, or it could be a landing pad for outgoing or incoming things like parcels, treats, the kinds of things neighbors drop off or pick up on a flyby. “You could set a plant on it,” Cameron said.
I had sent this picture to Cousin Mel and was telling her this story, when she said, “—or you could set a dog on it! A multi-purpose stump!” Something about that struck our funny bones hard; we laughed a long while over the phone. And we’re both always grateful for a good long laugh.
Roughly the same view to the east as the top picture, minus the tree, with its mortal remains: a big pile of chips, a swath of sawdust over snow, and a multi-purpose stump.
And then it was lunchtime. It had taken Cameron less than an hour to transform the juniper into components. Every time I’ve stepped outside since then, I smell the clean, sweet scent of the tree, lingering; even more strongly since the latest snow which lies six inches deep everywhere except the chip pile: the heat of the tree’s life force melted the snow almost as fast as it fell.
Lunch was another delicious cheese sandwich: mayo, mustard, avocado, Havarti, B&B pickles, and romaine. And our little lives go on, day by day, full of small adventures and simple pleasures, mindful and unmindful moments, gratefully aware of ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows.
Alan Alda as Dr. Gabe Lawrence on Season Six of ‘E.R.’
We all wonder what it is. Is it intuition, memory, awareness? No one can really say, even scientists. So we’re each free to interpret this word, consciousness, as we like… as long as we tacitly agree to some parameters. For me, the word consciousness sprang to mind the other night when I was in the kitchen doing dishes, watching ‘ER’ out the corner of my eye, and I heard a voice that took me only a fraction of a second to recognize.
That’s Alan Alda, I thought, as I turned to the TV to see who was speaking. I chose awhile ago to spend some of the remaining hours of my precious life watching ‘ER’ because I wanted, after reading some random article, to see the role in which George Clooney got his big break. He’s an admirable actor for his talents, and an admirable human for his values and actions, in my humble opinion. Anyway, it’s my choice how I spend these precious hours, and he’s pleasing to watch. As is the entire show, it’s good TV. It was indeed Alan Alda, brought on cast no doubt to keep people hanging in after Clooney left the show. (Season Six brought lots of new people on board, and it’s working for me. I’m grateful to know when and how I’m being manipulated, so I can choose whether I want to go along with it.)
With a predictable story arc, it’s clear he won’t be here long. But the point is, in that instant in which I heard and recognized his voice, I thought about consciousness. It’s been years since I heard his voice, a lifetime since it was as commonplace as any voice I knew, when he starred in M.A.S.H. and I heard him every week for years, and still decades later, it was unmistakable, instantly recognizable. It surprised me. Back then, Alda was ubiquitous; today he’s like a madeleine, a few recorded words bringing back with startling clarity a past reality, a lost time. I’m grateful for the consciousness that can string these disparate times together with the instanteous thread of a single voice.
I’m grateful too for the consciousness of ancient trees. Here is the Triangle Tree, with three distinct sides instead of a circular trunk. How do you measure the radius of an isosceles triangle?
Side 1 (pay no attention to the date)
Side 2
Side 3. All shot within two minutes of each other, equidistant from the tree, near sunset this evening. I’m grateful for The Triangle Tree.
I’m grateful for a healthy dinner, more or less, of a BLT salad. Nothing could be easier: lettuce, chopped tomato, mayo, salt, pepper, and crispy bacon. So simple, so delicious! I’m grateful for the cousciousness embodied in me to appreciate time, space, and food.
I’m grateful we got to start out the day with a nice walk to the canyon, greeting our old tree friends, and taking stock of more erosion deeper into the woods.
Most of our trails to the rim experienced some transformation, this one with a new rill snaking quite a long way down the center.
What happens when I get a burst of inspiration to tidy up or reorganize is that I always lose something. Awhile ago I did a kitchen project in which I bought a few new shelf and drawer accessories, and really got the pantry and cabinets in order. Not long after that I was searching for the J&M granulated garlic refill that my neighbors produce for their marvelous garlic grinder. I was sure that I had a packet somewhere, but scoured my spice racks and drawers and couldn’t find it. Some weeks after that, I was searching for the Chaat Masala that my cousin had sent me last winter, and I knew that I had done something sensible with it when I reorganized, but it had vanished. It was reminiscent of Breadgate, but I didn’t get quite so attached to finding it. And a week after that–this morning–I opened a little flat drawer in a lower cabinet looking for something else, and voila! There were the missing spices. I had quite logically put the flat spice bags in there instead of trying to cram them into the racks with the bottles and boxes. I’m grateful for finding lost things, and for being able to laugh about it.
In other food news, all the string beans are tapering off production, while the paprika peppers continue to ripen. Lunch was a simple BLT wrap. Wren and Biko each got a green bean, but Biko turned up his beak and Wren ate them both.
And I’m grateful that we got to end this precious day that will never come again with a stroll to the west fence, and view this surprising cloud configuration.
I’m grateful for another relaxing day, and for being able to start it with a lovely latté.
I’m grateful for the ancient junipers and the clouds above…
…and for the little dog on the ground below.
How am I different from that girl who first walked these woods thirty years ago when I discovered the leading edge of peace? I don’t feel so different. I feel the same, but more subdued, less eager. I feel well within the bounds of peace now, though not yet at the center. How is the land different? How are these woods different? More limbs down, more trees down, more down trees decomposing. Far fewer birds, and bugs. The mosses still green, cactus still spiny. Three paths diverged in the woods and I, I chose to stay in shade. Sun climbing as morning rain dissipates. The scant scent of damp sage, juniper oils rising, soft wet dirt underfoot. I’m grateful for taking time to wander aimlessly until I find myself among unfamiliar trees; and the for finding my way home. This seems as fruitful a way as any to spend an hour this late August day.
I’m grateful for the copious eggplant harvest I’m getting from three little bushes. I sliced yesterday’s four, each about six inches long, into three-eighth inch thick slices, salted them for about an hour, patted dry, breaded, and baked them.
The recipe uses only melted butter instead of egg to dip them in before dredging in a breadcrumb/spice/parmesan mix, then calls for baking rather than frying. It was so simple! As they baked, I made a quick sauce with canned tomatoes from last year, red onion from yesterday, a tiny purple pepper, and fresh basil and oregano. I mix and matched a couple of eggplant parmesan recipes, and essentially made up my own.
Once the sauce was reduced and the eggplant disks baked, I layered them with fresh mozzarella and sauce, topped with parmesan and leftover breadcrumbs, and baked. It was perfect! And I cut it up into portions and froze every bit of it, only tasting the pan scrapings. There are so many eggplants ripening that I’ll make another panful in a couple of weeks and eat at least some of it right away. My strategy is to load up the freezer with plenty of ready to heat meals for when the garden is spent, so I can enjoy and be grateful for summer’s flavors all winter long.
Tonight I whipped up this simple olive oil poundcake, but can’t touch it for another half hour until it’s cooled enough to tip out of the pan. I’ve not seen this trick before: after spraying the pan, dusting it with sugar instead of flour.
I’m grateful for all the conditions, choices, and help along the way that have led me to a path of Right Livelihood. I’m grateful for the teachers, mentors, and students that have helped me to be able to make my living teaching meditation and mindfulness. I’m grateful for the practices that bring peace and contentment to my life in these troubled times. I’m grateful for the opportunity to share these skills with others as we navigate the accelerating personal, local, and global challenges of the Anthropocene; and grateful to be offering a four-part online course in Meditation Basics starting this Thursday. Email me if you’d like to participate, at dukkaqueen@skybeam.com, with ‘meditation’ in the subject line.
The wild winds this spring have torn down many limbs in the forest, and I’m sure some whole trees, but I haven’t rambled the deer trails since last fall so I am just beginning to discover the changes. This morning I was grateful for rambling with Wren and Topaz, starting off on the Typewriter Trail but veering onto a deer track at the bottom of the first hill, then heading southwest. A freshly broken limb blocked the trail which of course didn’t stop Wren, though I walked around rather than under it.
It’s been awhile since I’ve simply wandered the woods as I used to with two dogs and two cats. Those were the halcyon days, and I’m grateful that I recognized that at the time. How everything has changed in two years. Sometimes it truly feels like living in the end times, and I won’t be surprised if that turns out to be the case. Whatever happens next, I’m keeping focused on doing the right thing in the moment. Often that is simply bearing witness to what’s left of this astonishing, spectacular, living planet.
I am perpetually grateful that I made choices going back three and four decades (or six, or lifetimes) that caused me to end up here, living among these ancient junipers, at this precarious time.
And I’m grateful for the tiny, ephemeral delights that each day brings, like the swooping sound of nighthawks, a cool evening breeze, the first fingerling zucchini, and a tiny predatory beetle on the coriander.
I’m grateful today for the capacity to participate fully in this life. From our early morning amble through our own trees to a late snack of sweet potato fries while exploring the rainforest of Gunung Leuser National Park with Barack Obama, I thoroughly enjoyed this one precious day that will never come again.
A late morning phone call gave me an opportunity to sit in the car again until Wren came and joined me. I’m grateful for the conversation, and for how well car training went though you’d never know it from her expression. After about twenty minutes I urged her off my lap into her seat, snapped her in, rolled up the windows halfway, and drove all the way to the mailbox and back. She was a little tense and showed it with a few big yawns, but she stayed calm. Back at the house, she leapt from the car and danced for joy. That was enough for one day.
Still feeling trepidation about food and cooking, I made another cheese sandwich for lunch. I tried out the cilantro salt but won’t do that again, even a tiny bit was way too salty for a little sandwich. I got a few projects done outside and in before crashing at three o’clock and napping til five. I’m grateful I have that option. I’m grateful for the Mindful Life Community I meet with on Monday night zooms, and for watching “Love on the Spectrum” while FaceTiming with my Kiki on the west coast. I’m grateful for having technology in my little mud hut that brings the world to me. And I’m grateful for the world of living beings that I have the opportunity to nurture inside and outside my hut every day.
I’m grateful for the first peppers now appearing on the Leutschauer paprika plants. The other pepper varieties, though smaller, are not far behind in flowering. After plucking the first few tomato flowers I’m letting them grow now too: though tomorrow is officially the first day of summer, the growing season here feels almost half over already.
A silvered juniper skeleton serves as a fence to keep people away from the precipitous edge of a sheer cliff.
I’m grateful to live so close to one of the most spectacular canyons in this country, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, protected as a National Park. I’m grateful to live near the North Rim, by far the less visited part of the park. Usually on a summer Wednesday morning there might have been one or two cars parked at the ranger station, a couple of tents in the campground, and no one else on the rim drive overlooks. I guess with Yellowstone closed for flooding everyone decided to come here. I’ve never seen so many cars at the ranger station, a dozen at least, and four or five at the nature trail parking pullout. There were people everywhere!
The Painted Wall, the highest cliff in Colorado
I’m grateful for the sweet melancholy of caring enough to miss someone I barely know when he’s gone… enough to grieve the wild world, the ancient trees and fragile lives in this park, for the state that the human species has brought this planet to… enough to wish the best for all beings, even humans, even so… I think I prefer this to not caring.
