Circling

Today my patch of urban forest felt like the BIG woods. Shortly after noon I set out for a short loop hike; the sky was clear and blue, and I could pinpoint the location of the sun in the sky: low, as we near the winter solstice. The air was sunny and warm, yet creeks were noisy with recent rainstorm run-off. This unusual combination took my imagination to much, much larger forest systems.

As I left the canopy to return to boxes and paved streets, I saw chunks of cloud flying north across the sky, then a grey mass covered the recently sunny southern sky. A REALLY gusty system blew in.

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As I move about the city by foot or bike, I often experience conflicts with motorized traffic, much of it mental (or nasal, but that's another story). Why do we devote our cities to over-sized, noisy, stinky machines? My attitudes range from fear, to aggression, to imagining traffic as a great herd of metal cattle. Recently, this story jumped to mind and seemed most apt (retold in my own words as I don't know the source):

One day, the wind said to the sun, "See that woman there? I bet you I can take off her big coat."
So the wind blew down upon the woman, but she only tightened up the buttons on her coat. The wind blew harder, but she wrapped her arms about herself.
Then the sun said, "Let me try." He looked out from behind a cloud, and the woman relaxed her arms. He stepped full into the sky, warming everything below, and the woman took off her coat.

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winter here
curl into a ball under covers
gently hold my heart

think of ice mountains
on a scale i can not fathom
be still, till clarity of mind returns

(journal entry Nov. 2010)