Faced with a new, demanding, full time job, my anxiety level is high these days. I’m grateful for the job, mind you, but I miss having the time to keep myself in balance in this off-balance world. Due to my circumstances, I’m spending less time in nature, but I’ve increased my awareness of the nature around me and beseech that nature–trees, grasses, leaves, bushes, rocks–to absorb my excess anxieties, relieving me of at least some of it. I ask this of nature knowing it has the capacity, and the willingness, to handle negative mental energies and absorb them without harm to its own processes. This is yet another reason we must protect the environment, at all cost. Nature heals itself and all living things that enter into intimate relationship with it. The key is awareness: Nature just needs to be seen and acknowledged and appreciated. That means when we walk through a forest or along a creek or through a rose garden, our focus needs to be on that which we are inhabiting at the moment. If you’re thinking, stop for a moment and come to your senses. If you’re talking, take some silence and be with the sounds and smells and sights around you. If you’re exercising, slow down and see the beauty around you. If you’re figuring out a problem, let it go for the moment, close your eyes and feel the breeze on your face. If you have the time, stop, sit, reflect on the nature around you. If you don’t have the time, to hell with the time you don’t have: stop, sit, anyway. You’ll catch up to the time; or the time will clobber you. But tomorrow, with some effort, you’ll get it back. You’ve got more time than you think. You’ve just got to set better priorities and manage your time more efficiently. I know, I just don’t know how busy your life is. Well, right now, I’ll bet mine is just as busy.
After I park my car just before 8 each work day, I walk down the same busy street, and there before me, next to the entrance of a non descript apartment complex is an immense redwood tree that has to be at least 500 years old. It looks more like the bulkier Giant Sequoia than the taller Coast Redwood. But every day, it makes my day. It’s a magnificent tree, of full crown and a girth of 20 feet or more, bursting through the concrete. It’s a tree that knows its place on this earth and is obviously happy where it grows. I think the residents of this apartment complex must love and notice this tree, since it seems like a being that is admired often. And the residents, if they do take notice, derive benefit in their overall wellbeing. I, who just expereince the tree twice a day, certainly do, and do again when I think about it during my eventful day at work.
This now urban located redwood has become a part of the gestalt that is my life, a part of the whole that comprises my day. I may still have my riviting anxieties, but the tree reminds me to let go of the bit in my fist in the monkey trap of life, and open to life like its crown and massive trunk, not unlike a holy man spreading out his robed arms, embracing all in sight, and beyond. I love that tree–a totally unique love quite different than the love I feel for my wife, or the love I feel for my close friends and family, or the love I feel for God, or for country. That redwood tree lives for the benefit of the planet. Its survival helps the planet survive. So when I bow to that tree and offer it my deepest thanks, I do so on behalf of Earth, which like the tree, I love in a completely unique way.
A footnote on BP and its Gulf of Mexico disaster: Boycott the bastards! Most Arco stations are owned by BP.
Hello Stephen,
How are you? If nothing else, less stressed, I hope. I so enjoyed your blog about working and the redwood tree. Focusing on something like that makes a huge difference in your day. When I worked at Analy Village and parked in the lot between our building and the fence, I’d spend a few minutes noticing what was going on with the trees that overhung the car. Sometimes, after a rain, there would be absolutely beautiful waterdrops on the bare branches and I’d focus on them. Other times it would be the texture and color or new growth. Here in Petaluma it has been the scent of Jasmine this summer as I walk in and out of the building. When we were in the Petaluma Village temps there were burgundy colored shrubs commonly called ‘Smoke trees” that were a wonderful thing to inspect each day. When it rained the tiny flowers would catch the droplets and then reflect light. The trees in our new yard make me feel happy and soothed when I sit out there or just view them from the window.
Well, I did it; I read my piece for the River Book in Petaluma last Thursday night; aloud and in front of complete strangers! It went well and I was certainly in good company; beautiful poetry, some set to music; some humorous pieces. Mine was very different and certainly a very different view. People were very nice and some I’d love to talk to many of them again. Jon, who I consider a very constructive critic, was quite pleased with my piece. One woman, an MFA in Fiction who is also a biologist and works at the Bio dept. at SSU read a good piece and we spent some time talking. She does a column on the natural history of the SSU campus. Her name is Lakin Khan. Now I’m hoping to find a writers group that focuses on natural history, the environment, etc., both non-fiction and fiction. I looked into the Napa Valley Writers Conference, but that’s $800 bucks for a week; a bit too much for me. I look forward to more of your writings. Best, Virginia
I love the way the redwood tree connects you with life. Sometimes it is finding the wonder and magnificence in our daily lives that connects us with the mystery of life more deeply.
How can we connect with the BP managers with compassion? When we make them bad, are we affirming life?
These are tough questions for me. I think there was negligence in BP executives, faulty leadership without concern for the impacts of cost cutting plus a lack of commitment to safety.
The oil spill in the gulf is overshadowed by the oil spills that continually happen in the Niger delta, China, and in other places around the world. Are the BP executives the culprits, or is the damage to our planet from our own greed for private cars that take us where we want when we want and for many other things . . . .
I highly recommend http://www.fouryearsgo.org/ for a fresh view.
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