Mayapple

I spent a couple of hours in the woods this morning, looking for Mayapple and pulling several non-native invasive plants.  Mayapple is a native forest plant.  In Sligo Creek Park, there has been concern about the impact of deer overpopulation and non-native plants.

When I found mayapple, I recorded the number of mayapple shoots and the location on my iPhone.  I pulled invasives - wineberry, honeysuckle, bittersweet, and garlic mustard - that I came across, not making any attempt at a comprehensive eradication.  A few times I pulled invasives and found little mayapples underneath.

The morning was pleasantly warm, sun streaming through the trees, the woods filled with the sounds of birds singing, hammering, and rustling in the underbrush.   Doing this work makes me feel good.  I never know what I will discover.  I feel myself tuning in to the subtleties of shape, color and texture that distinguish one plant from another.  I have to be open, perceptive, and accept that I see only a tiny bit of the detail that is spread before me with each step.

Tai Chi Chuan

A few years ago, before I began practicing yoga, I went to a few sessions of an informal tai chi class.  I enjoyed it, and began to learn the sequence, but the man leading the sessions left to work at a different location, and I didn't pursuit further.

I don't remember what the trigger was, but yesterday I was inspired to look up some beginning tai chi videos on YouTube, and I spent the day today, off and on, working on the first part of the Yang style sequence.

It's a mind-body practice with many similarities to yoga, and at the same time, it seems very different. It emphasizes gesture, and the body is in constant motion.  Yoga vinyasa practice also has continuous movement, but the yoga poses seem to have more structure, somewhat less fluidity in the form, than tai chi movements.

I'm interested to see where this sudden interest leads, and what I learn from it.  

Three Layers of Mind

Mind is layered.  The layers can be active, or calm.  When an outer layer is calm, the layer beneath it is visible.

Three layers are most obvious to me.  In the outermost layer, the mind is hyperactive.  Thoughts compete for attention with one another - there's a frenzy - mind jumping from one thing to another, finishing nothing.  The mind is anxious.

The second layer is where clear, focused thought occurs.  For it to be productive, the outer, frenzy layer must be calmed.  Here problems can be considered, and solved.  Mind can focus and stay with an idea long enough to explore it, to come to resolution.

Mind is judgmental in these first two layers.  In the first, it focuses mostly on fear and negativity.  In the second, it will judge things as good or bad.

The third layer surfaces when the thinking mind is quiet.  This is the layer of observation, of non-judgmental awareness.  Things are seen, and accepted for what they are.  The mind is calm, not frenzied, not thinking or trying to solve a problem.  It's simply alive, aware, receptive.

Power Limits

I've been riding my bike to Takoma Park on Sundays to teach yoga.  After trying out a couple of different routes, I've settled on the slightly longer, but simpler and more scenic, route of riding a couple of miles down the Sligo Creek Trail to Maple Avenue in Takoma Park, then heading uphill to the studio.  It is one long gradual downhill followed by a shorter, and for a stretch, brutal up hill.

The ride home is the exact opposite - a fast cruise downhill, braking for the speed bumps, followed by a long uphill, with the steepest section right at the end coming up to the house from the park.

Last week I rode the whole way back in 23rd gear (out of 27 on my Trek 7500 bike).  Coming up out of the park, I had to stand up to power through the steepest parts, but made it easily.

Yesterday I decided to try gear 24.  It was noticeably harder to push and keep rotational speed up during the steeper gradients, but I was still feeling pretty good as I approached the short but steep lift up from the park path onto our street.  I couldn't hit it with a lot of speed because the path was covered with large plastic sheeting laid down for heavy equipment being used for a stream restoration project, and I got just halfway up, about two turns of the crank, before I realized that my full body weight on the pedal wasn't providing enough power to keep the bike moving.

I hopped off before crashing, and walked the bike 15 feet or so up to the street, then was able to power up to the house.  It was interesting to find that physical limit - no amount of willpower could overcome the realities of mass, gravity, and the gear I had selected.  There just wasn't enough power for the job!

Catbirds and Foxes

The past couple of days have been cooler - in the 50s - for my morning walk to work.  Also a little breezy.  Very spring-like, pleasant, and a little invigorating.

As I walked the path through the wooded area not far from the house, I heard a lilting, creative bird song - then a "mew."  And then another.  I knew it was a catbird - the shy, gray relative of the mockingbird.   I looked around for it, and was startled when it flew out from the honeysuckle just a few feet from me.  I watched it as it flew off through the understory, eventually landing in a small tree near another catbird, perhaps its mate.

I walked through the path and on up Alton Parkway.  As I approached the lot where I've seen wildlife before, I stopped to look.  Indeed, about halfway up, at the base of a tree, were the two young foxes I've seen before, lying in the green grass enjoying the morning sun.  I stopped to watch, mostly shielded by a parked car.  They rolled in the grass, jumped around, nipped and pawed at each other, before one ran off into the underbrush.  The other rolled onto its back and lay for a while before sitting up for a long scratch, then lying down again.  It seemed a picture of carefree contentment on a beautiful May day.

Natural Day

Yesterday evening I was tired, and laid down on the floor in the front room for a while.   Even with eyes closed, I sensed the slowly fading light, and it carried me with it.   A few times consciousness came back to surface and I thought of getting up.  But my body was very heavy, the light a little dimmer, and it seemed natural to end my day with the turning Earth.

I began the day with an early walk down to the park for yoga in an open, grassy area.  There was moisture in the air, mist perhaps, but the lightest imaginable.  I practiced for about forty minutes, enjoying the spacious feeling, the birds that flew by, and the squirrel leaping through the tree in front of me.

Then I went home for breakfast, changed, and went back to the park for a two hour work party removing non-native invasive plants.  Our focus was garlic mustard, but I worked on whatever appeared in my path - wineberry, oriental bittersweet, honeysuckle, English ivy - feeling my mind tuning in to the shapes, patterns, and subtle color variations by which I recognize the plants to leave, and the ones to remove.  I came across a couple of deer, and after initially startling them, moved around them so they could stay in the corner of the park they had picked for the day.

After lunch, Pam and I drove seventeen miles north to Montgomery County's Rachel Carson Conservation Park.  I had just learned about it, and thought it would be interesting to explore.  It's a large area, over 600 acres, with meadow, forest, and a stream.  It has trails for hiking and horses, but compared with other places we've been, is very lightly used.  We wandered the trails for an hour and a half, enjoying the natural state of the place, hearing the hammering of woodpeckers and the rush of water, far enough from subdivisions and roads to feel a little wild, a hint of what the mid-Atlantic region was like before the modern human invasion.

This morning, I'm still feeling the effects of yesterday's nature overdose - more interested in feeling the breeze, watching for a bird, seeing the sunlight dappling the forest floor - than in the things on the list I had planned to do.

Gravel Bar

Yesterday afternoon was lovely - temperature near 80 and very low humidity.  The walk home through the neighborhood, with the warm afternoon light, white clouds in blue sky, and the brightly colored azaleas all around, had a magic feeling.

I changed and went down to the creek to sit for a while.   About 50 feet downstream from my sitting rock, there's a gravelly bar on my side as the creek leans into a muddy bank and turns back around the bar and out of sight.

A grackle flew down to the gravel bar and spent a few minutes at water's edge, getting a drink and preening.  I remember seeing grackles there last year.  Perhaps the same one, or their progeny.

The grackle left.  Some time passed, then a couple of bright yellow goldfinches paid a visit to the same spot.  They left, and a red cardinal took his turn.   Next, it was a couple of robins.

It was interesting to me that these birds were all visiting the same place along the creek, and that they seemed, in some way, to be taking turns.

Creature of Habit

Once a week, sometimes more, I drive 13 miles north to teach near Fulton, Maryland.  It is straight up Route 29, and usually takes 25-30 minutes during afternoon traffic before the worst of rush hour.

The road is divided highway with three lanes in both directions most of the way.  There are some interchanges but also a number of stop lights.  It's the shortest way by distance, and the shortest by time unless there is a particular traffic problem.

A couple of weeks ago I went up via I95 instead.  That adds 3-4 miles, but there are few stoplights and, if traffic is flowing well, higher average speed.  Still, the diversion - first a few miles east, then north and back to the west, is uncomfortable for me.  I'm much more at ease on the straight path, even if traffic is a little slow.  It feels safer, being headed in the right direction.

Last Saturday I was at the studio for a photo shoot, and decided to come back via a back road.  I could have, but didn't, look closely at a map.  I knew generally where it went, and figured it would connect somewhere familiar.  With no time pressure, I felt free to explore.

The two lane road wound through pretty country, quite hilly.  It crossed the Patuxent River, and went for a few more miles before coming to a stoplight.  New Hampshire Ave.  Oh, that's easy.  Turn left and head southeast a few miles to connect back up with Rt 29.

Tonight I went up again on short notice to sub for a sick teacher.  I decided to go back that way.  The first pleasant surprise was that traffic on New Hampshire - also a 3 lane each way divided road - was much lighter than on Rt 29.  The second was how much more relaxed and pleasant the drive was.  Though longer, and slower, it was much prettier and less stressful.  I still arrived with plenty of time to spare.

I'm so prone to find one way that works, and then keep repeating it - becoming comfortable and secure with it - and not wanting to take a chance on doing something different.  Breaking that habit makes life much more interesting.

Azaleas

The azaleas are blooming.  The neighborhoods are awash in color.  These pictures are from Brookside Gardens, a few miles north of us.  This afternoon was a beautiful spring day, temperature in the upper 70s, with a breeze.  The gardens was full of people, young and old, enjoying the flowers and the weather.   On days like this, nature feels like home.

Lessons of Garlic Mustard

I spent a couple of pleasant hours in the park this morning, in the middle of the spring explosion, pulling garlic mustard.  Garlic mustard is a non-native plant that thrives in this climate, spreads quickly, and pushes out native plants.  Deer don't like to eat it, having evolved to eat the native plants.
 
I've worked at this every spring for the past 10 years.  There is much less garlic mustard than there was when we started, but there is always more than I expect, based on how thorough I think we've been in the preceding years.  Lesson 1:  You can make a difference, if you're persistent.  And Lesson 2:  You don't "win," and walk away. You manage the problem, and stay ahead of it.

Garlic mustard is easy enough to identify.   It doesn't look much like any other plant, and this time of year has distinctive small white flowers.  But it is still easy to miss plants as you move through the woods. You'll pass an area, thinking it is empty, then turn around, and in a different light, see a plant you walked right past.  Lesson 3:  You always need to look more closely, more carefully.

There are many little pleasures from spending time in the woods.  Dappled sunshine filtering through the trees, water running in the stream, robins and woodpeckers flittering around the shrubs and trees, forest plants, like Spring Beauty, blooming.  The task at hand, pulling garlic mustard, can be tedious and frustrating.  The goal of eradicating it from the park is impossible to achieve.  There will always be more to do next week, and more to do next year.  Lesson 4:  Enjoy the moment, wherever you are, whatever you are doing.

Moving Slowly

This morning I took 10 minutes to lift my arms overhead and lower them back down to my lap.  Moving continuously, but very slowly, I have time to notice tiny changes in the muscles working.  It creates an incredible feeling of spaciousness.

Last Tuesday I taught a group of advanced students.  A man was there who I didn't know, making up for another class.  I led them through a similar - but not quite so long - slow arm raise and lower.  After class he remarked about that exercise.  He said he had Parkinson's disease, a kind - or stage - that caused tremors when he was still.  When he moved, he could control the tremor.  He had never tried moving that slowly, and was surprised to find that, even with that small amount of movement, he could control the tremor.

I find it interesting that the slower my movement is, the larger and more expansive it seems to be.  Like watching a film in ultra slow motion, I can see and feel so much more by stretching out the time.