breath – In the Woods

every somatic sensation, every breath

10.6.26 ~ Sandy Creek Park (view from the bird blind)

The heat and humidity seem to have finally left us! For good, I hope. I put on my permethrin-treated anti-tick pants and socks and joined Sally for a good long walk at Sandy Creek Park in Durham. It felt so good to be outside at long last and to do some birdwatching. And I got to add another bird to my life bird list near the end of our saunter!

Thought can keep the storylines alive, and the body reliably hums along with its somatic accompaniments that seem to confirm the storylines and then re-trigger them, but every re-telling is actually slightly different in content and always fresh in the act of remembering, and every somatic sensation, every breath, is fresh and new, however familiar it seems.
~ Joan Tollifson
(Ungraspable Presence, October 7, 2026)

Joan Tollifson’s words spoke to me the other morning as my thoughts have been spinning, trying to come up with a story to explain a distressing somatic symptom. Is it psychosomatic, triggered by anxiety and/or grief? (plausible) Or maybe a side effect of a prescription drug? (equally plausible) Or both, or something else entirely? My doctor is investigating and running all kinds of tests. Hopefully we’ll figure it out soon.

red-capped brittlegill mushroom in a patch of partridge berry

Somatic worries aside, it felt amazingly good and healthy to be out in the fresh air with a wonderful companion, enjoying the perfect sunlight of this time of year.

nature trail through the dappled sunlit woods

Ever since I moved to North Carolina I have received repeated warnings and cautions about snakes. Well, after living here for three years I finally encountered one! A copperhead was lying very still across our path through a marshy area. We turned around and went back the way we came. (Yes, I used the zoom to get the pictures!)

And he who made kittens put snakes in the grass.
~ Ian Anderson
♫ (Bungle in the Jungle) ♫

Eight months later, and the for the second time this year, Sally spotted another life bird for me with her binoculars. Even though it was at quite a distance, and moving around at a fast pace, she said it was one of the best looks at one she’s ever had. As with the yellow-bellied sapsucker we saw in February, my camera’s zoom lens struggled to get these shots, which are cropped.

The gorgeous Red-headed Woodpecker is so boldly patterned it’s been called a “flying checkerboard,” with an entirely crimson head, a snow-white body, and half white, half inky black wings. These birds don’t act quite like most other woodpeckers: they’re adept at catching insects in the air, and they eat lots of acorns and beech nuts, often hiding away extra food in tree crevices for later. This magnificent species has declined severely in the past half-century because of habitat loss and changes to its food supply.
~ All About Birds website

Sandy Creek from the Kenneth R. Coulter Bridge

Sandy Creek was pretty low. In spite of the rain we’ve been getting sporadically we are still in a moderate drought. The pond and the creek look a lot different than they did back in January 2025, the last time I was here with Tim. It was interesting to see the difference in the pictures of the creek at the ends of that post and this post. The post from that walk was entitled three stents make a difference. Turns out that was wishful thinking. Tim kept getting worse as his lung disease was finally diagnosed later in the year.

refreshment and solace

“Woman Seated Beneath a Tree” by Gustave Caillebotte

Some people take their troubles to a particular tree and gain refreshment and solace from its company; others derive inspiration from sitting at its foot or in its branches; still others have discovered that trees are truly mediators between the worlds, living bridges between our apparent world and the unseen realms of the otherworld. When we approach a tree, we need to slow down our breathing, slow down our rapid pace, our mental busyness, in order to be attuned to the spirit of the tree itself. … With our heart, we ask the tree to show us part of its nature. … We listen and give thanks. Even when we are just passing a tree, not visiting, we can still send out a greeting to it.
~ Caitlín Matthews
(The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year)

within the grip of winter

Within the grip of winter, it is almost impossible to imagine the spring. The gray perished landscape is shorn of color. Only bleakness meets the eye; everything seems severe and edged. Winter is the oldest season; it has some quality of the absolute. Yet beneath the surface of winter, the miracle of spring is already in preparation; the cold is relenting; seeds are wakening up. Colors are beginning to imagine how they will return. Then, imperceptibly, somewhere one bud opens and the symphony of renewal is no longer reversible. From the black heart of winter a miraculous, breathing plenitude of color emerges.
~ John O’Donohue
(To Bless the Space Between Us)

Groundhog Day was one of our favorite holidays. We had a tradition of taking our groundhog stuffy outside to see (or to not see) his shadow. We named him Basil (Wasyl) after my grandfather, who was born in Ukraine on February 2, 1882. By 2014 Basil had a companion, who was at first named Basil, Jr. At some point Tim, with his endless sense of humor, started calling the little one Oregano, and it stuck.

I cannot bear to continue this tradition without my beloved. So I decided to dig up some of the pictures I took of it over the years, in memory of Tim. I am definitely within the grip of winter, the one outside and a winter of grief. I still can’t imagine how a future without him will ever feel like spring.

Tim, Oregano & Basil bird-watching together (2025, Bolin Forest)
this turned out to be our last Groundhog Day together

definite shadows (2024, North Carolina Botanical Garden)

Tim waiting for the parade to begin with Basil & Oregano
(2023, Essex Ed Groundhog Day Parade)

fun in the snow (2022, Haley Farm State Park)

2.2.14 ~ Essex, Connecticut — Tim waiting with the Basils
(2014, Essex Ed Groundhog Day Parade)

Basil, Oregano and I will stay inside and light a candle this year.

green leaves whispering tales

July went down as the hottest month ever recorded in North Carolina history, but what a surprise, August turned out to be the coolest August in over thirty years. With all the recent medical appointments we didn’t get out much to enjoy the fresh air, but on Labor Day we did get a chance to walk out in the woods.

We kept thinking we were hearing a creek’s water running but finally figured out it was a breeze stirring the leaves above our heads. The first autumn we were here we learned to look up if we wanted to see any leaf colors, and we applied that lesson this day, looking up to see the leaves, still in their lovely summer greens.

It was slow going and there were many stops for Tim to catch his breath, but we managed to walk three quarters of a mile and he seemed none the worse for wear after we got home. The rests gave us time to notice all sorts of little treasures on the forest floor, too.

A woman once described a friend of hers as being such a keen listener that even the trees leaned toward her, as if they were speaking their innermost secrets into her listening ears. Over the years I’ve envisioned that woman’s silence, a hearing full and open enough that the world told her its stories. The green leaves turned toward her, whispering tales of soft breezes and the murmurs of leaf against leaf.
~ Linda Hogan
(Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World)

My respiration and inspiration….the beating of my heart….the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves.
~ Walt Whitman
(Leaves of Grass)

each day a little shorter

There comes a warning like a spy
A shorter breath of Day
A stealing that is not a stealth
And Summers are away —
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1560)

8.29.25 ~ Battle Branch Trail
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

We tried out this trail on another lovely, low humidity day. We wound up getting lost and reluctantly decided to cut through somebody’s yard to get back to a road. Summer is fading away, as it always does, each day a minute or two shorter than the last. Emily’s poem has an added layer of meaning for me, now, as I take note of Tim’s breaths becoming shorter, too.

serene and honey sweet

Another dawn — serene and honey sweet. At such times, it seems to me that dawn is nine-tenths of the day. Staying up late at night has a sameness about it; but every dawn is different. And this is the dawn of May — May, the month that is never long enough. This is May the first as the first of May should be. … On such a day as this, it is enough to spend the hours soaking in the sunshine, breathing slowly, sensing to the full all the perfumes of spring. It is enough to delight in the varied shades of green, in the forms of trees and the colors of flowers. On such a day, all our moments out-of-doors are lived in quiet pleasure.
~ Edwin Way Teale
(Circle of the Seasons: The Journal of a Naturalist’s Year)

a clear, cold pane

Between the living world
and the world of death
is a clear, cold pane;
a man who looks too close
must fog it with his breath,
or hold his breath too long.
~ Wendell Berry
(The Cold Pane)

at the same time

4.20.21 ~ red maple seeds
Connecticut College Arboretum, New London, Connecticut

Yesterday we took an amazing walk at the arboretum! A long one, for an hour and a half. We concentrated on the wildflower garden and the bog, both bubbling with the delightful signs of springtime.

The person who practices this exercise of concentration sees the universe with new eyes, as if he were seeing it for the first and the last time. In his enjoyment of the present, he discovers the splendor and mystery of existence and of the world’s emergence; at the same time, he achieves serenity by experiencing how relative are the things which provoke anxiety and worry.
~ Pierre Hadot
(What is Ancient Philosophy?)

Edgerton & Stengel Memorial Wildflower Garden

Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring — that delicious commingling of the perfume of arbutus, the odor of pines, and the snow-soaked soil just warming into life?
~ Neltje Blanchan
(Wild Flowers: An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers & Their Insect Visitors)

Glenn Dreyer Bog

In the light shed by the best science and scientists, everything is fascinating, and the more so the more that is known of its reality. To science, not even the bark of a tree or a drop of pond water is dull or a handful of dirt banal. They all arouse awe and wonder.
~ Jane Jacobs
(Dark Age Ahead)

the first touch of winter

The days move more swiftly now, too, with late dawns and early dusks. The days march toward the winter solstice like a winter farmhand with the wind at his back. And the long nights become the sleep of the earth itself, the rest, the waiting. The fox barks in the night, in the glitter of winter starlight. The deer shelter in the hemlock thickets on the mountain. The woodchuck sleeps, breathing only once in five minutes. And that hurrying wind whistles in the naked maples. November is at hand. This is the hurrying, impatient wind of winter that I hear in the night.
~ Hal Borland
(Hal Borland’s Book of Days)