Paying Attention

 

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

+ Mary Oliver

What stood out to you from that poem?

How do we pay attention out here at Point Reyes? What are some ways we can pay attention?

How can we document what we see and find without disrupting the park or damaging it?

Baby, this is the world

 Baby subway story. Nov. 6, 2019

What I Dream Of For Me

 HURRICANE

Mary Oliver

It didn’t behave

Like anything you

Ever imagined. The wind

Tore at the the trees, the rain

Fell for days slant and hard. 

The back of the hand

To everything. I watched

The trees bow and their leaves fall

And crawl back into the earth. 

As though, that was that. 

This was one hurricane

I lived through, the other one

Was of a different sort, and

Lasted longer. Then 

I felt my own leaves giving up and

Falling. The back the hand to 

Everything. But listen now to what happened

To the actual trees

Toward the end of that summer they

Pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs. 

It was the wrong season, yes, 

But they couldn't stop. They 

Looked like telephone poles and didn't 

Care. and after the leaves came

Blossoms. For some things

There are no wrong seasons. 

Which is what I dream of for me.

In March the Earth Remembers it's own name

Worm Moon

 

by Mary Oliver

I.
In March the earth remembers its own name.
Everywhere the plates of snow are cracking.
The rivers begin to sing. In the sky
the winter stars are sliding away; new stars
appear as, later, small blades of grain
will shine in the dark fields.

And the name of every place
is joyful.

II.
The season of curiosity is everlasting
and the hour for adventure never ends,
but tonight
even the men who walked upon the moon
are lying content
by open windows
where the winds are sweeping over the fields,
over water,
over the naked earth,
into villages, and lonely country houses, and the vast cities

III.
because it is spring;
because once more the moon and the earth are eloping -
a love match that will bring forth fantastic children
who will learn to stand, walk, and finally run
   over the surface of earth;
who will believe, for years,
that everything is possible.

IV.
Born of clay,
how shall a man be holy;
born of water,
how shall a man visit the stars;
born of the seasons,
how shall a man live forever?

V.
Soon
the child of the red-spotted newt, the eft,
will enter his life from the tiny egg.
On his delicate legs
he will run through the valleys of moss
down to the leaf mold by the streams,
where lately white snow lay upon the earth
like a deep and lustrous blanket
of moon-fire,

VI.
and probably
everything
is possible.

 

Jenny Holzer

 

Sunrise

Moab sunriseMarch 15, 2015
I can't explain the joy of the morning sun. There is nothing like the feeling of being suddenly and profoundly wrapped in it after walking around and waiting in darkness and coldness. Everything feels possible and I want to live so good and so hard and so purposefully. And I am happy to accept the challenges of my life: they no longer feel like foreign, imposed obstacles, but beautifully handcrafted tokens that I get to feel and be a part of and somehow becoming is made in them. It's a gold light. And unlike the sunset, it is here to stay for hours upon hours and that brings a different hope. It's ushering in day: movement, reasoning, searching, seeking, striving, feeling, facing; whereas the sunset bridges us to dark: settling, withdrawing, stillness, safekeeping, dormant, cocooned in dreams not of earth or mortality. 

-Timpanogos Hike 2009
-Vancouver Trip 2010
-November Weekends post 2011
-Cannon Beach 2017

I want to make the Ferry

 

One night, Allie and I almost missed this ferry. There was a storm. There was a fight. We kept missing turns. Our gas light came on. We went 90 mph in a 50 mph zone in front of a highway patrol. The officer didn't chase us down. We saw the lights of the open garage at 8:28 pm. It was leaving at 8:30. They usually close gates at 8:15. The gate keeper let us through. We pulled into the ferry garage and I put my face in my hands and sobbed. Sobbed. We made the ferry.

I just want to make the ferry. Don't we all? We just want it to be as good as we believe it can or should or is meant to be. We all want to cross over the darkness we feel is insurmountable in our lives. We all want to cross over and change and become and see the other side and feel loved and known and not lost and we don't want to come up short or mess it up or be left behind. We are all scarce. We are all scared. We are all racing and wondering if we are screwing it all up with every mile we speed through the highways of our lives. Are we going to make it? Are we going to get it? Are we deserving of what we actually want in this life? On this night, March 12, 2018, the Universe answered with an unequivocal

YES

&

YES

&

YES

We will cross over.