instinct

Taking a wander in some nearby woods while searching out a wetland and natural spring I almost stepped on this copperhead.  

Even though we aren't in the same space I can almost hear some of you gasp.

I admittedly didn't have on my high awareness hat that I do when I sit.  

I was wandering with my sweetheart - something we don't do nearly often enough. We were dreaming, laughing, and just being as we walked and talked...

I did hear the squirrels whinny and the titmouse came close in and alarmed at us as we walked, but in my typical human mind I figured they were just fussing at us - we were definitely disturbing the 'peace'...

Or were we?

As we walked along the trail I was looking down scanning the forest floor for little things moving along and my mind didn't register a snake, but my body did.  I startled without any consciousness of what had caused me to stop. It took a few moments for my mind to catch up to what was out of order.  But, I knew something was out of order - somehow.  

I stopped about 5 feet - 2 steps - shy of stepping on this copperhead.

I never coiled up the entire time we were looking at it. (We did keep our distance to keep it at ease) 

What's got my mind going is that I didn't recognize it as a snake until after I had stopped both myself and Jason.  Even then, it took me a flash of minute to compute what was out of order AND that it was a copperhead.  

I can track my brain process of looking for the pattern that made sense in a situation that didn't make sense.

I wasn't scared. 

I was instinctual.

My body knew before my mind something in this scene was out of order and to beware.

I imagine deer are like this when they are grazing and freeze all of sudden for no foreseeable reason - at least not foreseeable to our human minds.  Something inside has clued them - or maybe the birds and squirrels are telling them and they just speak the language of nature better than I do.  I can't say whether they are conscious of it but, I believe they carry the instinct to just know and understand the communication happening between all the living creatures - something most of us as humans no longer remember...

Or do we?

And we just aren't paying attention?

As we so busy that we have forgotten how to actually survive?

Are we so busy we no longer use our quiet inner voice to give us guidance?

Reflecting on it as I drifted off to sleep I'm pretty sure that my natural mammal instincts kept me from stepping on this snake. As I revisit those moments I cannot track in my mind how else I knew to stop because I didn't see the snake until AFTER we stopped.  Then, I saw it through the patterns held from my past experiences and knowledge brought me to something that made sense - something I was patterned on and could put it into context.

This is the knowing I seek through the practice of stillness.

The voice inside that guides so clearly when the muck is out of the way for it do so.

In this instance, it was a paralyzing inability to move forward and to see what the danger was.

And my good friends the titmouse had my back like they have so many times before today...

One day, I will give head to those calls consciously...

Swamp Hibiscus

When I was a little girl and most of my life my grandmother has sat in silence. 

She reads, but only at certain times of the day.  She watches television, but more often she doesn't. 

When she would pick me up from school the radio in the car was never on. (That was probably a good thing - she was a terrible driver).  It seemed strange to me as a child growing up in a world where television came through an antennae on the roof into the yellow dial on the television.  Why would you choose the quiet when there was a world of images and stories not hiding in books, but right in front of you - I grew upwith the great shows like Night Rider, Buck Rogers, The Dukes of Hazard, or the A-Team (my all time favorite)!  Oh!  and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe... I mean come on... Why wouldn't you want the sounds of music blaring through the speakers when pop music was everything and the great country singers knew how to perfectly sing  your life story...

My grandmother made no sense to me.  

She was happiest shucking corn with the neighbors and shelling peas or picking fleas off her dog.  The silly stories she and my grandfather would share about their childhoods and their work days seemed pointless to me so I seldom listened.

I wish I would have paid better attention...

During the day when she wasn't cooking she was cleaning or working - she was a secretary and attended college - not common for a woman of her age.

And there was never a time she turned me away - no matter how hyper or talkative I was.  She liked my company... I guess.

And every time I arrived, the television wasn't on, she was busy working on some gardening or life task and she was ready to receive me and do whatever I wanted.

What a golden age of stillness.

I have no idea what a normal life looks like.  I have always assumed mine wasn't.  My mother spent all her days canning - or so it seemed to me.  And my dad seemed the most relaxed when he came out of the garden.  We went to church every Sunday - just like Little House on the Prairie and went to see my grandmother and grandfather every Sunday after church for Sunday dinner.  And somehow, we weren't a normal family to most of my school friends growing up.

I understand most people are embarrassed by their parents as they mature - and rebel as they grow, but I never really understood how great my life was until I could understand my grandmothers silence.

It seems strange now that I am older and my own children think I am weird and flaky.  Our world is turning towards their adulthood and I have tried with all my might to provide them the best of my grandmothers world and this one. Our present world is much louder and way more visual than mine was, but... none the less I have tried.

Tonight, I sit in the silence of summer.  The cicada song is beginning to fade into cricket song, the summer air has unloaded the burden of water it has held all day in a perfect summer shower.  Mosquitoes are biting badly enough that even the intoxicating sunset can't keep me outside. 

The lights are off in my empty house.  And I sit here in silence and understand my grandmother in ways I never have before...

Juvenile Mourning Dove

I've been watching these birds all summer and here's one of their babies that seems to have fledged before it was ready. Generally, I don't handle birds. I chose to pick this one up to see if there was anything wrong with it.  There wasn't so I put it back where we found it. Hopefully mom and dad will come back for it. We did feed the cats so they would be distracted while we wait for mom and dad.