Winds, Sittings, and Warblers

The sky is showing its overcast visage again this week.  Winds are gusting, and instead of blue sky providing a visual backdrop to the forest, the roar of air moving through leaves would be the constant sonic backdrop to my visit.  The ground is wet from rainfall early in the day, and drizzle would continue sporadically.  I don my somewhat ill-fitting “shoe sleeves” or “gaiters” over my worn hiking shoes, the fabric frayed to the point of actual holes in some places, my intransigence compelling me to make them last for one more season in spite of that: I must get every last minute of use out this expensive investment in footwear!  With this article of clothing in place, I am covered from head to toe in water-proof rain gear, only my face showing, making the mosquitos less of a factor in my direct experience of the forest people today.

So with my feet doubly clad, instead of bare, I embark!  And whom did I meet?  Well, I caught my first glimpses of a yellow warbler pair today, whom I failed to capture on camera.  I also had my first interaction with a red squirrel, which did oblige me for the taking of a photograph.  Many fungi made their presence known through their blooms, pulling my attention toward them - warping the fabric of space time in a positively Einsteinian fashion (these are well represented in the images below).

Near the end of my visit, I find myself in the circular clearing on the east end of the forest, and I spend some time sitting cross legged in the centre on a patch relatively clear of grass, just the right size for me to make bum-contact with the earth.  I feel my sit-bones, or “rockers” convex against the soil, the inversion of the arches of my feet, a feature of my embodied geometry that I find fascinating.  I play with shifting my weight forward and backward, and side to side, in ways that don’t work the same way when I am standing on my feet.  The heads of the grasses around me are at eye level now; it is as though my spine grows like a stalk out of the plant-pot of my pelvis.  I can twist and sway from here, like a grass in the wind.   I feel like I could become privy to the conversations of the grasses and wildflowers, if I stayed and listened long enough.  My legs, which ordinarily keep me so elevated above the plane of grass and wildflower communication are folded neatly in front of me, through the great range of motion allowed by my hips, moving out of the way to allow direct contact between bum and lap of the earth - opening a channel of communication with which chairs insidiously intervene.  I wonder what it would be like to be buried waist deep, the bottom half of my body coming home to the earth as roots, the way the bodies of plants remain - they never left the ground to sacrifice their place for new dimensions of mobility.

​But now through overcast skies the lighting has dimmed, almost imperceptibly, and I am ever so gently nudged from my comfy seat, to return to the flatter forests of cars, overpasses, train tracks, skyscrapers, busses, and finally gridded clusters of houses before darkness falls comprehensively over both.