Fog Forest [Recently, I was fortunate to live for a week within the power of the tides and fogs, and even now I remain haunted by a week where all was movement and change.] Slip off the twisty coastal road in Maine and you will be heading for the sea. Your excitement is mounting. It is the distant tolling of a bell which is drawing you through the dim light of a narrow lane which is surrounded by a magical …
Occasionally, a neighbor crosses our fields, homeward bound after a strenuous afternoon scrambling around ponds and up and down rocky hills on the land behind ours. A couple of days ago he discovered me sitting in the midst of the meadow, savoring the passing fleecy clouds, listening to the wind whispering in the dried grass, picking up the song of the last of the crickets, watching a large, green grasshopper hawking over the meadow, feeling the still-warm wind on …
There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. I’ve just been dipping into Thoreau’s Sounds, and I’ve been stung. As Jon Kabat-Zinn points out in his fine meditation book, Wherever you Go There You Are, this passage is really about cultivating stillness. Was it possible that I could simply stop? Years ago, I had …