Carrying the Experience

Can You Imagine

By Mary Oliver

“For example, what the trees do not only in lightning storms, or the watery dark of a summer’s night or under the white nets of winter, but now, and now whenever we’re not looking, surely you can’t imagine they don’t dance, from the root up wishing to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly more shade, surely you can’t imagine they just stand there loving every minute of it, the birds, the emptiness, the dark rings of the years slowly and without a sound, thickening and nothing different unless the wind and then only in its own mood comes to visit, surely you can’t imagine patience and happiness like that.”

Carrying the experience

By Amy Barber

What if you changed your response to January’s weather? Noticed the crisp and refreshing air, celebrating when the sun would shine on those special days. Wearing a cozy hat and warm sweater. Breathing in the wood burning in the distance and seeing the smoke dance from a chimney into the sky. Focusing light attention to the blooms or berries that are asleep or the bareness of the limbs on a tree. Nature and our environment is more than an experience it’s the most natural medicine right outside our door.

Noticed the crisp and refreshing air, celebrating when the sun would shine on those special days.

Each and every day, my dog, Lenny and I go out for a good walk and at times, my family joins me. It can be rainy, windy, sunny, warm, unpredictable. Weather is so similar to our lives. It has become a way to reset and start again, a honoring ritual, not a job to get done. The feeling is similar to the experience when you step on to your yoga mat, practice and then depart your yoga mat. You carry the experience and it becomes a part of you. I practice paying attention to what nature shows me, the trees, their shapes and variety, along with the nests from various animals. What is used, how high it is, are they cozy, getting lost into their cycles of life. I find nature in most forms to be very healing and can see why people walk in meditation. My late January suggestion, is to get outside, bundle up and you will return with a smiling and restful soul.