Nature – Page 6 – Nourish-n-Cherish

🌿Loud Walks in Quiet Places🌿

Walks : Loud & Quiet

There are quiet walks and there are loud walks in quiet places.

Henry David Thoreau called it, “Taking the village with you.” or something to that effect. What he meant, I think, was that we took the problems occupying our minds and held onto them tightly, and a trifle obstinately, thereby making it harder for nature to soothe and calm. Really! The human mind is a strange thing. Sometimes, nothing sticks, and other times, nothing slides.

“I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walking

These walks are trying at best. I found myself fiddling with poetry to try and distract the mind from the village, and the people in it. It was a feeble attempt, and one that requires far more concentration to be approved by Bard/Gemini maybe, but it’ll do. It would have to do.

Poetry: Balm to the Soul

Was poetry not the balm to the soul?

The trees are trying

The waters are waving


The swans are soothing

The squirrels are scampering


The deer are divine

The eagles are evocative


The vultures are volatile

The pelicans are pure


Yet the spirit

Remains dispirited


Some days are trying

For your mind is wavering

Just as I had managed to get nature to work its magic, I was summoned back to reality by three loud gentlemen discussing the virtues of housing all their data in the cloud, and how that reduced their costs. I found myself calculating storage costs and estimating budgets.

I looked resolutely at the clouds overhead and said loudly, “Nope – look at the real clouds!”. I may have startled a little wren foraging for food in the bushes nearby, and it took flight in an alarming manner after throwing me a reproachful glance.

Oh well!

Nature did do its work!

But, I found, on getting into the car, nature had done its work. It may have had to try harder and send a few more butterflies my way, but it did. I was much refreshed in mind and spirit, clearer in what I needed done.

I chuckled remembering Thoreau’s quote on Walking, and spending at least 4 hours a day in nature – a luxury most of us can seldom afford, but we can afford smaller bursts of it:

“I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.”

A disruption of ducks

There is a curious rhythm to the days after our India trip. The usual things still occupy our time – school, work, projects, commutes, the changing landscapes of nature, and all the rest of it. Maybe it is the throes of a winter season, or the fact that after the intense ceremonies of the beginning of the month, the quiet is disconcerting, but we felt on edge.

Like the hedgehog, we found ourselves peeking out of our hidey holes to see if life is normal, and finding that it is, were somewhat taken aback. Do you mean to say that we must plan to prune the roses?

Oh well, all right. If you insist, I suppose.

One morning, the son and I finding ourselves at a loose end decided to take a bike ride to dissipate some of this energy.

“Amma! Look – I just saw a hedgehog peep out.”

“Oh nice! It is close to February, so it must be checking.”

“I didn’t see if it saw its shadow though – we were going too fast!” said the son.

It was a lovely day – the feel of wind against our cheeks, the gentle cumulus clouds overhead, and the bay hosting a large variety of birds. We stood there taking in the beautiful sights when hundreds of birds took flight all at once, and then, as though nothing had happened, flocked back to their original place a few moments later. The son and I had a number of ideas as to what caused the disturbance, each more juvenile and silly than the next, but left us cackling all the same.

No one could deny the beautiful shared experience of the disruption – the birds heaving in one smooth cacophony and the humans ashore fumbling quickly to capture the sudden movements and failing miserably.

It reminded me of the book I was reading the previous day, On Duck Pond – By Jane Yolen Pictures by Bob Marstall.

on_duck_pond

As I walked by the old Duck Pond

Its stillness as the morning dawned

Was shattered by a raucous call:

A quack of ducks both large and small …


An understanding quickly dawned:

We’d shared a shock, and now a bond

And I was feeling very fond,

Of everyone on old Duck Pond.

As always the day out in nature surrounded by the fabulous clouds, the sun’s rays, the beautiful lights of the ocean, the stories the son and I swapped on our ride, the birds, first signs of spring in the wildflowers by the bay, had weaved its magic, and we returned home refreshed in mind and spirits.

img_9442-effects

P.S: A group of ducks, as Jane Yolen mentions in her book, are known by a number of names:

A raft of ducks

A paddling of ducks

A badelynge of ducks

Also, bunch, grace, gang or team.

The Sounds of Silence

After two weeks in India, the first walk I took by the lakeside was far more comforting than I thought. Nature has always been my solace. It has always been the thing I’ve been teased most about by the children.

But it is the one place, I can just be.

I stood there for several minutes savoring the silence, listening to the swishing of wings as a bird took flight, or the winds rustled through the tree tops above.

The son put it best when we came back. “Shh!”

He said. “Can you hear that?”

“What?” The husband and I said cocking our heads to listen.

“Exactly! “ he said looking triumphant.

It was bliss.

“No other sound can match the healing power of the sounds of nature.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

Sun Rise Sun Rise!

We stood there waiting for the sunrise over the Grand Canyon.

We had driven up there the previous evening in what felt like 20 degree weather. The moon lit scapes around us were beautiful from inside the car, but outside, it looked unforgiving. It was cold, and the desert around us was different enough. Even so, the same landscapes at night take on a different feel and dimension altogether. The shelves of stone around us in the early morning light of dawn was breathtaking. As if a different hue was revealed with every tilt in angle of the sun’s rays.

How drawn to light we are as a species? Somewhere, the sharp smells of pine wafted through, and I wondered briefly whether we stopped to let our other senses weigh in as much when we have sight and light.

I suppose we do let sounds and smells in, and do allow our sense of touch to help us along. But do we really develop our other senses? A preliminary search says we gather about 80% of our sensory perceptions using sight.

Dogs, on the other hand, seem to distribute their perceptions between sight, smell and sound.

The early morning calm of the sun-rise and my meandering thoughts were interrupted by the loud calls of a mother looking for her children. I turned around irritated, and was somewhat surprised that I was surrounded by this many people on a cold Christmas Day morning, standing on a cliff overlooking the Grand Canyon and waiting for the sun to rise.

But I suppose, it was my fault for not expecting this. It promised to be a beautiful day, after all, and like me, many had decided to brave the cold, and take in the marvelous sunrise over the horizon at a point helpfully named Sunrise Point.

I let out an amused grin, and exchanged a look with the children – they seem to have caught on to my look of surprise at finding other people there. It was a beautiful moment: the mother pulled her child towards her, and the sun burst forth in glory over the horizon.

All was well with the world at this moment.

Let’s go for some breakfast and then take a long, quiet walk along time, I said shuffling away from Sunrise Point, and the children chuckled at the thought. We are not an early rising family, and we scurried inside towards warmth, food and coffee before attempting to take on people and canyons.

🕊️🍁 🦅 Hawkish Power? 🐦‍⬛🍁 🦅

As soon as I came home, the words rattled in me

To capture the moments when joyous and noisy, turned to eerie and silent.

The terrifying sound of all the birds leaving at the same time

The fluttering of a thousand wings – away, away to safety.

The ecstatic beauty of standing under a tree

With thousands of leaves fluttering gently down.

The ears pricking up with the joy of

Listening to hundreds of little birds chittering above.

All gone with the arrival of one regal hawk

The birds all flew, while the hawk gawked.

Without the rustling of the birds

Even the leaves stopped falling.

Of what use was this power?

When there was no one to exert it on?

It was a show of power so instant, so terrifying and so alien to the beautiful wintry surroundings, that I shuddered in spite of myself.

My thoughts swirled with dictators and their absolute clawing for this kind of power. Do people in power not want a happy, joyous populace? I thought of the happy chittering and camaraderie of the birds from moments ago and stood under the tree not making any noise, content to enjoy the sounds of life overhead.

As I walked back home from this eerie setting, my mind wandered to all the fittings of power and its lure over mankind. It doesn’t look like it will abate. Countries continue to go to war, and though countries may win or lose, the people involved always only seem to lose – their trust, their security, their loved ones, their hopes, their peace.

The Light of Being

The evenings have been drawing in earlier and earlier. As if the natural tilt of the axis weren’t enough, there was a time change thrown in. The result is that my evening walk is in the company of the glittering stars, and I am grateful for these little reminders of light – as far away as they may be.

One evening I found myself thinking of this and that on my evening walk. The stars twinkled above, the leaves crunched below. Though I could not make out the colors just then, I could imagine them well enough in my mind’s eyes – bright reds, yellows, deep maroons.

Californian Novembers are magical indeed.

Where our northern or eastern counterparts would already be bracing for the winters, our autumn cloaks are just getting started. Our gingkos have only just donned their beautiful cloaks of buttery mellow yellow, the maples and oaks, their swirling cloaks of ruby reds, and thick velvety ones of deep maroon. I wondered when the cold would start and looked up at the stars instinctively.

Albus Dumbledore seemed to wink at me through the stars:

“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

– Dumbledore in the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

I swished on for a bit pondering.

Deep in the epipelagic layers of the ocean, there are creatures who have taken this to heart. In the twilight zone, the only light they have is their own. How must that feel to them? The deepest darkest nooks and crannies of an unforgiving ocean made accessible only through their own bioluminescence.

IMG_2457-COLLAGE

In one fell arc bypassing lands and atmospheres, the stars and the bioluminescent life in the oceans seem to share a Light of Being.

What are our sources for finding the light in ourselves – the means of switching on the inner lights? Good friends, warm meals, bracing walks in nature, the finest ideas in literature, art and music. Hygge. A halo that reflects the warmth and light within, in the harshest of winters, and the coolest of springs? If only we could all cast our own little patronus.

Books:

The Sounds of Cricket

India has always been host to the resounding sound of cricket. The game and the insect. Television crews lose no time in covering the game non-stop, while the sound of crickets in the hills don’t seem to warrant coverage. Though, there is just as much excitement there if you ask me.

We had gotten away from the immediate hustle and bustle of the city, and were thus allowed the luxury of listening to the sounds of nature. We shushed each other with rather more vigor and noise than was necessary and finally, the room quieted down. The sun was setting outside. Combined with the excellent company, the warm conversations reminiscing some of our pleasant times together, the beautiful light filtering into the room, and the thrumming of crickets all around us, it all made for a surreal calm setting. I could imagine what people meant when they said ‘ports from the storm’ in that setting.

I had no idea how many crickets would be required to produce a racket like that, and filed the question away for another time. That is the sort of the thing that the son would find amusing to find out. In the meanwhile, my friend was telling me about she noticed that at 7 o’clock sharp, the sound of crickets just died down. This was curious. So it wasn’t at sun-down. It was a few minutes past sun-down.

The act of producing the sound is called stridulation, it meant that the thrum buffeting us in the hills was the sound of vibrant life finding a way to thrive in its environs. Much as the hum of entertaintment in the form of games, music and televised stories in our cities is a sign of thriving life of humans.

The sounds of a species do have a story to tell – though I envisioned this line of thought quickly devolving to burps and farts, and wisely held my tongue. Just as my friend said, the clock ticked from 6:59 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. and the sounds instantly died down. An eerie quiet filling the void in its space.

Later that night, after we had played a game of cards and quietened down for the night, a few minutes after lights were out, the sounds of our whispered conversations, the giggles of the children, and the admonishments of the older folks all died out. Just as sudden and just as deafeningly as the crickets earlier that evening.

I smiled, and clearly exhausted drifted off to sleep myself, the lack of sound a cocoon for which I was grateful.

Yes, Aunt Alberta

Alberta sounds like a fussy old aunt who sews quilts, and asks you if you’d like some warm milk before turning in for the night. Yet, Wild Rose County, Alberta, is anything but. There is nothing domestic or warm about its mountain peaks, or its glacial rivers, or its expansive valleys, plains and lakes.

Every peak has a distinct…

Actually, it feels droll to use words like ‘distinct’ to describe the peaks of the Canadian Rockies. Majestic, unconventional, foreboding maybe? But it still does not capture the raw power these mountains exude. The peaks truly do appeal to the fanciful too. As we drove towards Banff in Canada, the car was filled with tales of the kind that must’ve inspired the folklore of American Indians for centuries. I resolved to go and look for some of these legends later.

“See those mountains? Don’t they all look like old men?”

“Yes! They are all wizards who went against nature, and then the rivers and lakes learnt of their treachery, cursed them to watch over them as penitence.”

“Ooh! Nice one!”

“Those must be the mountains where the goats learnt their footing.”

And so it went. Through the traffic and amidst the trees with the towering cliffs of mountains on all sides.

“Look at these little bridges? With trees and plants growing on them. Like little bridges for wildlife to cross the highway.”

“Yes! That is exactly what it is!”

wildlife_bridge

“Like the stuff mentioned in the West Wing episode?” asked the son wide-eyed. His interest in all things constitutional seems to be on the rise these past few months, and so we have started watching West Wing again. It makes for wonderful entertainment. If Aaron Sorkin was able to make a series like that based on a Presidency like Bill Clinton’s, I wonder what he would be able to do with a Donald Trump one. (But that saga wrote itself.)

Anyway, this is the clip in which the wildlife crossing is mentioned: Wolf’s only highway featuring Pluie the Wolf

Driving along the Canadian highways with nothing (miles of no human habitation) and everything (bounteous, gorgeous, fabulous nature) on all sides is surreal, and a change that we were grateful for.

IMG_6497-COLLAGE

⚡️💨⛈ Oh! To be a cloud! ⚡️💨⛈

Time spent in a beautiful meditation of clouds, is time well invested in one’s soul. I am convinced of it.

The past week had me sighing and exclaiming at nature’s shows. The multi-layered clouds rolled in, and treated the populace to extraordinary shows of the skies.

At times, it would be the shades of gray against the white fluffy clouds as a backdrop.

At others, it would be the inevitable beauty of the setting sun’s rays as it used the clouds as a canvass for their light based shows.

Sometimes, I would find myself after a late night meeting simply looking at the moon flit in and out of the marvelous multi-layered curtains in the sky, to the orchestra of the winds through the trees outside.

One such time, I found myself picking up two beautiful children’s books and flipping through them with contented sighs. If only one could bottle up these little moments, there wouldn’t be angst or turmoil in the world.

Owl Moon : By Jane Yolen

Owl Moon

The Boy and the Blue Moon: By Sara O’Leary, Illustrated by Ashley Crowley

Both books managed to capture the beauty of the moon’s rays so perfectly.

I wonder whether the animals we share the planet with enjoy the cloudy days. They seem to be. One morning on a beautiful morning when thoughts of gratitude flitted in and out, much as light seem to be flitting through the scudding clouds overhead, I stopped in awe at the birds. This season, I noticed many more birds – maybe a bounteous winter made for a marvelous nesting season for the birds as well, who knows?

But the blackbirds, geese, herons, storks, pelicans, wood-ducks, grebes, hawks, turkey vultures, bald eagles, harriers, thrush, sparrows, robins, woodpeckers, avocets, yellowlegs, hummingbirds, and so many species that I can’t identify, have been flitting and filling the air with beautiful characteristic sounds.

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Life seems busy as the conscientious parents take care of their newly hatched young.

As I write this, a mild rain is falling outside – so gentle there is no discernible sound of the rain. The only sounds are those of chirping birds like a soothing backdrop to the drama in the skies: The grays against the greens and the multicolored flowers a unique kind of meditation.

#Nephophilia : a lover of clouds

“How sweet to be a cloud. Floating in the blue!”

– A. A. Milne

Spring in the Sierra Nevada

The yearning for adventure was astir. Yodeling by the river was not enough, huffing and puffing like penguins in the Atlantis marathon was not enough. Luckily, spring time in California never disappoints the strider in the hills. So, off we went traveling to the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Driving up to the mountains, we passed by the green hills, greener pastures, and entire meadows, and hillsides covered in lupines, daisies, poppies, milkweed, and little yellow flowers (So many varieties!). If ever any one needs their worries and woes to flee, a drive like this is all it would take.

“In every wood, in every spring, there is a different green.” – J R R Tolkien

Yosemite National Park is probably one of the most explored parks in the world.

🪨Every major boulder is given an impressive (sometimes humorous) name: El Capitan, Half Dome, Cathedral Rocks.

💦Every major perennial waterfall carefully charted – yet every year in spring with the snow melt, the number of little creeks and waterfalls that arrive and vanish before the summer’s heat is like trying to estimate how many chips a kid would eat out of a fresh packet.

🏞 Every picturesque spot named – there is even a week dedicated to photographing a waterfall – that week the rays of the sun at sunset make the waterfall look like a volcanic lava flow. Photographers spend hours waiting for that wondrous shot.

Of course in spite of everything been catalogued and charted, nature finds a way to impress and astonish. High up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, we expected to be cold.

But, Spring in the Sierra Nevadas felt like winter left in a huff one evening. No lingering farewells, no tears, no gloom, no fussing. Just packed its bags and left.

Spring pranced in, as though waiting back-stage secretly shooing winter off for a bit of shine in the spotlight, and all the world suddenly brightened and lit up in the sunshine. We were so shocked to have two days without needing thermals, or jackets and just listening to the snow melt from the peaks whooshing down the rivers.

As we walked through the forests of Yosemite, poetic phrases bubbled up. Why oh why does this happen, and how oh how does the world know April is Poetry Month?

So we bubbled along, squirting out our little phrases. The ones that came and the ones we contrived to fit the ones that came.

Earth, River, Forest, Light
Green, Blue, Brown, Yellow
Pristine ponds reflecting these sights.
River rapids,
Birds chitter,
Breeze mellow.
Pine wood,
Gnarled roots,
Bulky boulders.
Puddles in the middle
Rugged rocky cliff faces
Moss clinging to these spaces.

This has probably been the most generous winter I have witnessed in the past two decades in California. I felt bad for the number of trees that were felled due to the extraordinary winds and rains coming after years of near-drought, but overall, I was grateful.

Wherever we turned in the massive valley – rivers and waterfalls surrounded us. It is truly a beautiful time. When the power of Earth makes you feel humbled, grateful, and joyous, is there a better retreat?

yosemite

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