belief – In the Woods

small wonders

3.21.25 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden
sandhills pyxie-moss

Last year the sandhills pyxie-moss was blooming on January 28 and was still blooming on March 7. This year we saw only one flower on the clump on February 26, but finally, on this March 21 visit we found a full bloom! We will keep checking on it. You may remember that this miniature shrub is very rare and found only in a couple of North Carolina counties.

When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us.
~ John O’Donohue
(Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)

It seems reasonable to believe that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction.
~ Rachel Carson
(Silent Spring)

After enjoying this wonder-filled morning, a pleasant surprise was waiting for me at home in the evening. As I went to close the drapes in the living room I noticed a pretty mourning dove sitting on the edge of the birdbath on our deck. She was watching me. We made eye contact and we gazed at each other for the longest time. Tim finally went and got the camera and took this picture of her, still looking at me. Years ago, and shortly after my mother died, a pair of mourning doves used to keep me company in my garden while I was out there weeding it, but it’s been many years since I’ve had one make contact with me like this. I felt comforted.

Things have been pretty discouraging around here since Tim had his stents put in. Thankfully he seems to be doing well in cardio rehab. But my dear sister has been diagnosed with the same kind of endometrial cancer I had back in 2017, and her prognosis may not be as favorable as mine was. Also, due to osteoporosis I’ve had to give up my beloved yoga practice. I’ve replaced it with tai chi, which I am liking well enough, but I still find myself grieving for yet another loss. I was very grateful for the solace the mourning dove was offering me.

shells, seaweed, feathers

6.10.21 ~ herring gull, second year ~ Eastern Point

The morning after the heat wave was over we couldn’t wait to get out of the house and take a walk at the beach. I’m done with hiking in the woods for the summer. I managed to get poison ivy again last week, even after being very very careful on our last ramble. I swear it floats in the air in June. Fortunately this outbreak is not as bad as the one I had last year.

Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.
~ Mary Oliver
(It Was Early)

I was very surprised to see a couple of mourning doves on the breakwater. I’ve never seen them at the beach before. And I only saw the one herring gull, looking like he might be in the middle of molting. Later on the walk we saw an abundance of feathers on the rocks and floating in the water. On this day, too, there seemed to be a colorful seaweed salad floating just under the surface of the water.

The belief that nature is an Other, a separate realm defiled by the unnatural mark of humans, is a denial of our own wild being.
~ David George Haskell
(The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors)

While we were noticing everything and anything in the water we heard a familiar bird call in the distance and then a couple of American oystercatchers flew into view!!! No pictures because they kept flying in circles around the area and whenever they went to land they disappeared behind the rocks. I do hope they are going to make a nest there like they did back in 2014. That was the last and only summer we saw them here. Click here if you’d like to see the pictures: oystercatchers!

The light must have been just right and my arm must have been steadier than usual because for some reason I got some halfway decent pictures of a cormorant. Which isn’t saying much. They’re too far away and have frustrated my attempts to photograph them for years. This one had a bit of a personality and seemed different than the others.

I have started on a new drug to manage my radiation proctocolitis symptoms and am hopeful it will make things easier for me, perhaps even get me to the point where I will feel comfortable traveling to visit our grandchildren. We’ll see. My wonderful gastroenterologist is retiring. 🙁 I will see her one last time in July. She assures me, though, that she is leaving me in good hands.

Had a wonderful weekend visiting with my sister — the talking went on forever. 🙂 I hadn’t seen her in person since December, and that was on a walk outside, six feet apart, and with masks on. What a blessing to lounge around the house and catch up. Living in the present moment.

And the grandchildren are planning another trip up here in August!!!

enjoyable moments

5.21.20 ~ chipmunk
Fennerswood Preserve, Stonington, Connecticut

For the animal to be happy it is enough that this moment be enjoyable. But man is hardly satisfied with this at all. He is much more concerned to have enjoyable memories and expectations — especially the latter. With these assured, he can put up with an extremely miserable present. Without this assurance, he can be extremely miserable in the midst of immediate physical pleasure.
~ Alan Watts
(The Wisdom of Insecurity)

I enjoy all the hours of life. Few persons have such susceptibility to pleasure; as a countryman will say, “I was at sea a month and never missed a meal,” so I eat my dinner and sow my turnips, yet do I never, I think, fear death. It seems to me so often a relief, a rendering-up of responsibility, a quittance of so many vexatoius trifles. … It is greatest to believe and to hope well of the world, because the one who does so, quits the world of experience, and makes the world they live in.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Journal, May 1843)

there is simply this moment, as it is

4.8.18 ~ Sandhills Horticultural Gardens, Pinehurst, North Carolina

Spirituality is life itself. Being life. Being this moment. Not as a practice or an attainment or something an imaginary person does in order to get somewhere else, but just because it’s What Is. It’s the natural state, the ever-present, ever-changing thusness of Here / Now. The part that falls away (if we’re lucky) is the search, the endless search to “get it,” to become “okay” at last… the belief in (and identity as) the psychological self and its problems and the endless attempts to cure them. … As I see it, there is no end to awakening, no end to spiritual exploration and discovery, no end to devotion and celebration and wonder… but what can end (and only now) is the search to fix “me,” to unstick “me,” to enlighten “me,” to finally get control (by understanding how the universe works, by getting The Answer, by finally vanquishing all “my” neurotic quirks and tendencies and solving “my” problems). When all of that ends, there is simply this moment, as it is. Boundless and free.
~ Joan Tollifson
(Facebook, July 18, 2017)

owl prowl

5.25.17 ~ twilight at Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center
photo by Timothy Rodgers

The pale stars were sliding into their places. The whispering of the leaves was almost hushed. All about them it was still and shadowy and sweet. It was that wonderful moment when, for lack of a visible horizon, the not yet darkened world seems infinitely greater — a moment when anything can happen, anything be believed in.
~ Olivia Howard Dunbar
(The Shell of Sense)

barred owl
photo by Mark Musselman
South Carolina

Last night, we took a magical evening walk in the woods, an owl prowl, offered by the Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center. And something wonderful did happen! We saw and heard a family of barred owls, a mother and three fledglings!

Before the walk we listened to a lecture about the owls found in Connecticut, some common, like the barred owl, others rare, like the snowy owl. We met a little rescued screech owl who was blind in one eye. And there was a lab where we got to crack open a sterilized owl pellet and find the bones and teeth of swallowed rodents. A very informative and enchanting evening!

life so sweet

That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet.
Believing what we don’t believe
Does not exhilarate.

That if it be, it be at best
An ablative estate —
This instigates an appetite
Precisely opposite.

~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1761)

credulous animals

10-1-16-0506 — 10.1.16 ~ alpaca portrait
Museum of Life & Science, Durham, North Carolina

If I wanted a one-sentence definition of human beings, this would do: humans are the animals that believe the stories they tell about themselves. Humans are credulous animals.
~ Mark Rowlands
(The Philosopher & The Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death & Happiness)

doubt

5.15.15.5844 — 5.15.15 ~ gull at Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy

What we overlook is that underneath the ground of our beliefs, opinions, and concepts is a boundless sea of uncertainty. The concepts we cling to are like tiny boats tossed about in the middle of a vast ocean. We stand on our beliefs and ideas thinking they’re solid, but in fact, they (and we) are on shifting seas. Any ideas or beliefs we hold in our minds are necessarily set against other ideas and beliefs. Thus we cannot help but experience doubt.
~ Steve Hagen
(Buddhism: Plain & Simple)

endless strife

FrederickChildeHassam2 — “Summer Evening” by Childe Hassam

All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife. What do creeds matter, what possible difference does it make to anyone today whether the doctrine of the resurrection is correct or incorrect, or the miracles, they don’t happen nowadays, but very queer things do that concern us much more. Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.
~ Beatrix Potter
(A Life in Nature)