This issue has been a somewhat difficult one. My own column was hard to settle down to write. I feel the lack of a long, hard-hitting thought piece, but I didn't go searching for one, either. I'm feeling wishy-washy about one of the short pieces, but do I take it out?
When I did last month's column on wilderness, I was thinking of writing about one of my favorite spring books this month. But I didn't. It's hard to think of spring as a discrete season when February had so many 60 degree days and no snow here in the plains next to the foothills of the Rockies. This lack of a seasonal dividing line is in some way inching me into a deep sense of unsettledeness. There is no place that I walk in complete solitude and quiet of all but bird and animal sounds. That also feeds the feeling of unsettledness. (Interesting how I could do that in Vermont just by crossing the road and the cow pasture and diving into the woods and fields beyond.)
I am going to be in New York City in mid-April for a Music Festival and singing one evening at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts with my choral group. I don't have a high level of comfort with the whole thing, and it is pulling my focus awry. I alternate between thinking about it, and deliberately pushing it away from my mind. It has put a blockage in my spring-thinking, and yet, I will have a Saturday and a good share of Sunday free to enjoy a piece of east coast springtime.
Last Sunday I walked the labyrinth on the hillside in the low mountains of Evergreen, just a friend and me. I got to the center and stretched full out on the earth. The sky was bright blue with white cloud variations. A jet contrail had a shadow that stretched and blew apart just as the contrail did. Now tell me, how can a contrail in the sky between me and the sun have a shadow behind it?
I remembered a line from Chopra's Unconditional Life which is his quote from the Shiva Sutras:
Simply by looking into the blue sky beyond clouds, the eternity.
So I laid there and looked. Yes, it needs the clouds to give that effect of here and there, for there is the depth, the eternity. An ephemeral second or two of seeing.
It makes me hungry for more. For the mountain bluebirds I saw the morning before to return, but after all, they were mountain bluebirds, not "prairie" bluebirds. They were flying into the northwest wind that morning, after barely hanging on to the olive tree branches they had landed on beside the pond. Strangely enough, the friend at the labyrinth had also seen two or three that same day at least thirty miles away.
Exploring the messengers and determining the messages. A fast-moving falcon-like bird...pay attention. But then when there's something that catches my attention, the skeptic steps forth.
I do have my work cut out for me.
I wish you the best,
Cherie Staples
Editor