Mary Reynolds Thompson's Blog, page 7

A Silence as Big as the Universe

It was a full-moon night, just days after the Schweitzer Ski Resort in northern Idaho had closed down for the season. The snow, piled high, blanketed the mountain as Bruce and I trudged up the slopes in our snowshoes, CamelBaks filled with hot tea.

Lost in the effort of climbing the steep slope, no one else for miles around, the silence enfolded us like a mantle. Moon, stars, sky, snow. That night, I felt a part of everything around me–my spirit mingling with the world like breath, or grace.

Now I live in Marin County, California, where there are more people, more cars, more buildings than was true of our time living in Sandpoint. Don’t get me wrong, I love this corner of the world, not least for its natural beauty, but it gets busier every day.

I miss the space and the silence. I miss, acutely, the uncluttered feeling, the elbow-room for the soul, that living in quieter, emptier places gift us with.

Surrounded by noise and crowds, I am more defended, more distracted, less open, and somehow less part of everything around me. So I try and make time for silence. I walk alone, or get up early, sip coffee, and let my imagination lope around in the emptiness and hush.

I like who I am better when my schedule, my home, and the places I inhabit hold time for quiet contemplation. Better still, I like spending time in the wild.

That night, after our long climb we flew down the steep incline of the mountain, snow spraying up like starlight.

We would soon be called back to the cacophonous world of California, but not quite yet.

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Osprey Orielle Lake’s Wild Soul Story

Osprey Orielle Lake, author, activist and Founder and Executive Director of Women’s Earth & Climate Action Network, International (WECAN), shares her amazing story of backpacking in the mountains at age fourteen with a group of her peers. They are there to clean up garbage, but a deeper level of purifying takes place. Miles away from make-up and clothes, and the usual concerns of a teenage girl, Osprey feels her priorities shifting, and a new sense ease and intimacy growing in the group. One night, lying under a sky filled with stars, she experiences a sense of wonder and spirit that she knows will forever change the way she looks at life. You can find more about Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus here You can find out more about Osprey and her book Uprisings for the Earth here.

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Silence

Within each of us there is a silence,

a silence as vast as the universe…

When we experience that silence, we remember

who we are, creatures of the stars,

created from time and space, created from silence…

Silence is our deepest nature, our home,

our common ground, our peace…

Silence is where God dwells.  We yearn to be there.

The experience of silence is now so rare,

that we must guard and treasure it.

This is especially true for shared silence.

Adapted from Gunilla Norris, Shared Silence

 

How is silence your deepest nature?
Describe a moment of shared silence. Who or what was present? What was its gift to you?
Write an alpha poem using the word SILENCE. Each letter in SILENCE begins a new line.

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A Love Measured In Miles

It was late June, the Trinity Alps. Our first backpacking date took place just weeks after we’d met. We covered the seven miles to our campsite under a hot sun. The next day, clouds gathered.

By late afternoon we were dodging lightning bolts, and by evening the snow had started to fall, wet and heavy. We gulped down dinner and retreated to our tent, which later collapsed under the weight of two feet of snow. The following morning a white world winked at us beneath a blue sky. Our cooking gear, hiking poles, and trail had vanished. It was as if we were the only people on Earth.

There are many ways to tell a love story. But it seems to me that Bruce’s and mine is inextricably linked with the land––with the thousands of miles and hundreds of trails we have covered in the last nineteen years.

Together, we’ve confronted grizzlies and mountain lions, stood in awe of bristlecone pines and bobcat, gazed into the amber eyes of coyote, and devoured thick sandwiches to the hum of bees in meadows of wildflowers. We have skinny-dipped in the skin-biting cold of glacial lakes, snowshoed moonlit mountains and skied through forests of giant sequoias. We have felt the ecstasy of lying on our backs watching the northern lights swirl green and purple above our heads, the heat from the day still warming the earth, our hands touching.

The inability to trust had always kept me from loving deeply. But after this tall, kind man held my hand over makeshift bridges of fallen trees, guided me patiently across narrow mountain trails where my vertigo threatened to get the best of me, or simply held me in his arms while I cried out my exhaustion and hatred of mosquitoes––in Hurricane Pass in the Grand Tetons––it didn’t seem like such an issue any more.

There is also something wonderful about walking and talking outdoors. Our conversations have meandered in many directions and over a wide variety of terrain. Nature provides the space and sense of possibility that fuels intimacy. Undistracted by computers and iPhones, we seem always to have more to say to each other, learn about each other.

Turning our full-bodied attention to the natural world, we have become more skilled at reading body language. If, to attract a mate, a male Anna Hummingbird rises in the air and dive-bombs at up to 60 feet a second, its rippling feathers creating a signature song, so be it. I have learned to read my husband’s signals too! Weather, seasons, all teach that we have different moods and rhythms, that things change, moment to moment. Blisters and blizzards of bugs develop humor and a bit of grit, which always helps.

Early in our relationship, I didn’t know if I could love in the long run. I am a restless spirit by nature. But walking has taught me that no moment is ever the same. If I remain curious, open to beauty, if I breathe and allow my body to respond to the aliveness of nature in all her moods, then I find there is always more to learn and to love. My husband of nearly two decades is a country still waiting to be discovered.

Once, when I was married to another man, a wise woman asked me, “Can you imagine growing older with him?” I couldn’t.

Now, as I walk through the forest above our house with Bruce, I notice how old trees support new life. I am excited to grow old with this precious and beautiful being. We may not be able to backpack quite the way we used to, or hike the number of miles we once took in stride, but we will, if we are fortunate, continue to walk and talk and learn about the world and each other for many years to come.

And this I know: Over the the bumpy and scary places, Bruce’s hand will always reach for mine, and mine for his.

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The River Stone

she held the stone wet from the river

so black and glimmering it could have been a dark star

they shouted down from last night’s sky

a magpie semaphored through the green cottonwoods

calling complaints against their presence

while the river giggled past their feet like talkative wine

and the sun wrapped them tight in their yearning

––it’s a jewel she said

i want you to have it

he took it from her with hands twining

water mingling on skin and rock like oilslick in the heat of day

the sky danced in her brown eyes and time stopped in his heart

(c) T.H. Watkins, “The River Stone”

From Earth & Eros: A Celebration in Words and Photographs

Tell of a moment in nature charged with love and sensuality, as in the poem.
How does nature contribute to your sensual pleasure.
Write a love letter to a riverstone, or a rainbow, or a tree. Whatever takes your fancy in nature.

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Jamie K. Reaser’s Wild Soul Story

Biologist, poet, author, environmental educator and wilderness guide,

Jamie. K. Reaser’s Wild Soul Story

Jamie K. Reaser is a woman whose love of the natural world takes many forms and passions. But where did this love begin? In her exquisitely told story, Jamie tells of being a six year old child, partially paralyzed at the time by a grand mal seizure, who encounters a toad in the window well while playing in the basement of her home. Gazing into the toad’s eyes, something stirs in Jamie, and a deep lover of amphibians takes root. It is a love that will guide her life and her studies, and help to shape her world (and therefore ours). You can find out more Jamie by visiting her Talking Waters blog page. As well, you can find her many books of poetry and her “Courting the Wild” series on her Amazon page.

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Malheur Before Dawn

An owl sound wandered along the road with me.

I didn’t hear it—I breathed it into my ears.

Little ones at first, the stars retired, leaving

polished little circles on the sky for a while.

Then the sun began to shout from below the horizon.

Throngs of birds campaigned, their music a tent of sound.

From across a pond, out of the mist,

one drake made a V and said its name.

Some vast animal of sound began to rouse

from the reeds and lean outward.

Frogs discovered their national anthem again.

I didn’t know a ditch could hold so much joy.

So magic a time it was that I was both brave and afraid.

Some day like this might save the world.

(c) William Stafford

Tell of a time when you awoke at dawn and heard the world awakening.
Have you ever experienced that sense of being both brave and afraid while in nature? What was that experience for you? How does it help you to live your life?.
Begin a poem or prose piece with the words, “Some day like this might save the world.”

FYI: Malheur is a National Park in Oregon.

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Song of the Wild

It’s January, and the promised El Nino rainstorms have finally hit. I put on my waterproof jacket and head outside, letting my thick-soled boots squelch in the mud. The rain is a much-needed blessing for the dry earth of California, but I’m aware that a string of gray days have wrapped me in melancholy even so. Then I hear the song of the wild.

Standing in a wood of coast live oaks, Bay laurels, and madrone, the air is filled––riotous with––birdsong. It’s the American robin, in numbers I have never seen before in the fifteen years I’ve lived in this valley. Hundreds upon hundreds of feathered beings are whistling from the treetops and swooping to eat the red madrone berries.

I feel like a concert goer in an acoustically perfect auditorium. I throw back my head, open my arms, and let the sound vibrate through my body. And vibrate it does, sending energy waves from the tip of my head to the soles of my feet.

The robin’s call is often described as repeated syllables that go: cheerily, cheer up, cheerup, cheerily, cheer up. You’ll find no argument from me; I am already feeling remarkably more optimistic and joyful.

The National Health Service in England, reeling from the costs of anti-depressant prescriptions, did a study on the effects of walking as a way to alleviate mild depression. Lo and behold, they found that a walk outside did as much, if not more, to lift the spirits than any pill. They have doubtless founds all kinds of logical and scientific reasons to explain this.

But what about this: there are moments outdoors, even in a city, when nature’s beauty and magic pierce the soul and make us glad simply to be alive.

When I returned from my walk, I wasn’t just smiling. I could feel my heart singing.

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Chara Armon’s Wild Soul Story

Chara Armon’s Wild Soul Story. Raising her young children in Philadelphia, after completing her Ph.D. in history and religion, Chara Armon is disturbed by how often pollution alerts prevent her kids from playing outside. Thus begins her own personal transformation. Veering from the purely intellectual path, Chara founds Mutual Flourishing, and begins to support women in the joint work of healing themselves and the Earth. In her Wild Soul Story, Chara challenges us to love this world, even in its broken state, as we work to interweave our own wellness with that of the natural world. You can find out more about Chara and her work on her website.

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Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every year we have been

witness to it: how the

world descends

into a rich mash, in order that

it may resume.

And therefore

who would cry out

to the petals on the ground

to stay,

knowing, as we must,

how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?

I don’t say

it’s easy, but

what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world

be true?

So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,

and the ponds be cold and black,

and the sweets of the year be doomed.

(c) Mary Oliver

What are you witness to as darkness descends? Write a poem about exploring the changes you see about you.
How does winter affect your health, moods, energy? Write in your journal about the connection between this season of little light and your own inner light.
If you’re reading this from the other side of the world, write about what it is to live with long-day light.

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