Feeding My Spirit

March 10, 2013

4.6 mile run with the dogs

50 degrees, wet, slushy.

I took the driveway out to the road.  The driveway is very muddy.  I skipped and hopped between relatively dry places.  The dogs tried avoiding the puddles too.  The first mile felt easy and good to my body.  Later my spirit improved when I saw my first robin of spring.  When it first flew in front of me, the distance made it difficult to see what it was, but it had that distinctive, darting, flirting sort of flight that I associate with robins.  It let me get close enough to confirm its rusty breast and yellow beak.  Are there bugs available for it yet?  The rain had stopped but small trees hung with water droplets, and, for a moment, they looked like mini holiday lights all dripping from the branches.  I had to make a pitstop, and to do so, ran past the Watching Log.  It is breaking down so quickly now.  It holds memories of Tansy times.  The memories aren’t breaking down like the log though.  I wonder if the log will be still solid enough for my Woods and Wetlands class to sit on this summer. 

Chickadees sang me around the big lake.  They are so insistent, and their voices are varied.  I realize I can never come close to truly making their sounds.  What am I lacking in my mouth to make such sounds?  What is in their beaks or throats that allows them? I heard the crows too.  They made me think of the owl book author.

I was so thirsty, and with melting snow and puddles everywhere, my thirst was intensified.  The lake was a melting, shining mirror with ice still visible here and there.  When I saw the sap buckets hanging from the maple tree taps, I had a taste memory from childhood.  Nothing ever tasted better than the sap in that cold bucket.  I confess, I took off my bright vest and snuck into that private woods with the dogs to try for a palm-full of that sweet water.  All I was able to do with the lids firmly on, was reach in and dip my fingertips, but I licked my fingers like a child, and the taste memory was confirmed.  I wished I had a long straw to drink it.  I was never allowed much of it, in my memory of childhood, because it all had to go to make syrup.  How much sap can a maple tree lose?  Does it hurt the tree?  Do they have to alternate trees yearly?  I never thought to ask.  I don’t even know how to tap a tree.

Coming around the little lake, I had a sudden scent in my nose that I could not identify, but it was not of humans.  It wasn’t quite the smell of spring, but maybe the smell of warm and melting.  It was a sweet smell, and very faint.  I felt as if it came from the lake, but I am not sure.  It didn’t remain, or my nose adjusted to it.

Yesterday we had a bluebird perched in the shrub outside our window.  What are they eating?  I have seen several of them since January, and I can’t think how they are living here.  This one sat so close to the window for so long, I could clearly see and enjoy its blue-ness.  The color of its breast is not unlike a robin’s.

On Friday I saw a woolly bear caterpillar, all black, making its slow way across the lake road. It was quite large.  I do not know what it is doing out, but maybe the robin or blue bird can eat it.

I spent too much time indoors all week.  I did not feed this part of my spirit that was starving and thirsty.  May I remember to do so regularly.

March 11, 2013

The owl author talked about helping kids narrow their focus for journaling by using a paper frame or picking one sense or one element to write about.  Yesterday’s journaling was not the kind I usually do.  I will experiment now with writing it the way I usually do and see how it differs.

Heading out with spirit cramped and my mind constrained.  As soon as my shoes hit the mud and the smells of melting and trills of chickadees entered my senses, I could feel my petals unfurling in relief.  My body settled into the run, feet sending signals of life to every cell of my body.  Wake up!  It’s time to Breathe and Be.  My nose, conflicted for days with artificial scents, opened to a sweet, light smell of sap and moss and melting lake water.  Now feet on wet clay, and all of my internal antennae tuned to trees, water, birds, snow… the world that I belong to; I missed it.  The magnolia buds beckon my thoughts toward a coming spring, and my excitement to encounter my first robin rivaled and surpassed any knowledge gained in the last week in the world of friends, teaching, books, and learning.  There he was, yellow beak and distinctive flirtatious dance, and he was all mine just then, looking at each other in recognition.  My thirst for this absorption joined my literal thirst, and the buckets of cold maple sap caught my eye, reminding me of childhood.  I considered, then camouflaging myself, sinking into the melting wetness of the woods, reaching, straining a bit, hand into bucket and fingers dipped into cold sap water.  I know I should not be here, should not interfere in what is not mine, but licking my fingers, I am a child again beneath our maple trees, and the taste is the purest, faintly sweet and cold.  It is worth the transgression.  Soon I will hear the spring peepers welcoming the trilling red-wings in the swamps, and, like all springs, will loosen what is tight in me, will allow flow of words like sap to drip onto the page as I try to bring it all with me wherever I go.