Thank you, Leavenworth and the Autumn Leaf Festival Association for a wonderful parade yesterday! It was a fun spectacle! If you missed it, you can find out more about the Festival at http://autumnleaffestival.com. See a few pics and some videos below! Fall colors, salmon festivals, bird migrations & yoga meditations…autumn in Leavenworth inspires mindfulness about the natural world. Fall returns to the Pacific Northwest like an old friend bearing gifts. The trees are gathering their bouquets: maples are turning heart red, aspens burnished gold. There’s a cool edge to the air, and the scent of campfire stirs the memory, playing with our sense of time. Autumn holds a poignant beauty, precious in its impermanence. It's a nostalgic season. Back-to-school feelings still tug at us from the past, as do our deep cultural ties to the land, around which the public school year was originally designed. There is so much nature has to teach us in the fall, and I realized I'd better start paying closer attention. Here are a few recent experiences in which I found myself in the role of student again. Salmon in Session Last weekend I visited the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery, located a quarter-mile from Snowgrass Lodge. Built in 1940, the hatchery was one of three created as reparation for the Grand Coulee Dam’s devastating impact on migratory fish populations (salmon, steelhead) after the dam blocked access to spawning habitats in the Columbia River basin. The Leavenworth hatchery helps restore Chinook Salmon to the rivers and streams, and replenish Native American tribal fishing grounds. As I toured the grounds, looking at young fingerlings in their tubs and full grown salmon born last year, I learned about the incredible the lengths they’ll go, traveling miles and miles of waterways to reach the Pacific Ocean, where they’ll live for years before returning (by scent) to the rivers of their youth. Back to this very spot. Their life is literally a journey, their marathon swim upstream a perfect metaphor for perseverance. Nature, I thought, is the best teacher. This weekend, on the September Equinox, I returned to the hatchery for the Wenatchee River Salmon Festival. Featuring hands-on learning activities for kids, reptile shows, birds of prey exhibits, and Native American art, the free community day celebrated the return of the salmon to our Northwest rivers. Other Migration Lessons I also recently went on a bird walk at nearby Sleeping Lady Mountain Resort a half-mile farther up Icicle Road. There, I joined more than a dozen early morning risers armed with binoculars. Led by retired U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist Heather Murphy, we spotted American goldfinches in the aspens, osprey on the wing, and dippers in the river, and we chased an elusive white-headed woodpecker through the organic garden, its call leading us down the primrose path. As we scoured trees and snags like detectives, searching for signs of life that hadn’t yet migrated south, I felt grateful for the thrill of discovery, and to be learning something new. It was the final bird walk of the season, and last chances are always exciting. Perhaps that’s fall’s hold on us, too—the last-chance splendor that feels like “a second spring, when every leaf is a flower."[1] Fall reminds us to be ever mindful, to not miss a thing. A New Practice Autumn is an ideal time for starting new activities, and not just outdoors. One of the founding texts on Hatha Yoga, the Gheranda Samhita, suggests starting a new yoga practice in spring or autumn, “for in these seasons success is attained without much trouble” and one “does not become liable to diseases.”[2] Sounded good to me. After the bird walk, I took in a gentle yoga class at Sleeping Lady led by Joanna Dunn. The transition from investigating the natural world to more inward observation felt like the right progression to me. Clearly, fall has already been working its magic on me. For me, the deep learning of autumn lies in paying attention to my changing world. I like to think of every trip around the sun as a metaphor and a microcosm of a whole lifetime, from the spring of our youth, to our ripe autumn years. The current season holds great lessons for us, not the least of which is to make the most of our lives with the vibrancy that fall knows best. What feelings does fall inspire in you? What activities are on your calendar? Share them below! [1] Voiced by a character trying to connect with an estranged family member, this line from Act II of Camus’ play, Le Malentendu (The Misunderstanding), seems to assert that life offers us second chances. The encouraging quote belies the play’s dark themes and Greek tragedy-style ending, but I still love the metaphor. You can read contextual dialogue along with one reader’s commentary here. [2] The 17th century Gheranda Samhita, translated by Rabbahadur Srisa Chandra Vasu, is viewable online here. It is because he is thus free from striving that therefore no one in the world is able to strive with him. - Lao-Tse, Tao Te Ching [1] Sometimes I feel like hiding from the world. The Pacific Northwest corner I call home has been veiled in smoke from long-burning fires in California, Montana and B.C. for much of the summer. Every morning, I check an air quality app just to see if it’s safe to spend the day outside. Then there’s the news. From natural disasters to equally inhospitable political climates, the news leaves me informed but depressed. Looking around, the planet feels like it’s suffering, and at times I feel that way, too. How about you? It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by forces beyond our immediate, individual control—surrounded by battles that seem impossible to win. It makes sense, wanting to retreat. What I propose is reframing it not as retreating from, but retreating to: to a place blissfully free of overcommitted schedules, overextended energies, and constant media attention. A place where we can put ourselves back together after our nerve-racking world has shaken us apart. A place of solace, after having hitched our hearts to the things we thought would keep us buoyed in the storm of life—our health, our family, plans to buy a home or travel—only to be battered in the turbulent waters anyway, and to lose one or more of the things we were banking on. A place where the stress in our lives won’t overtax our nervous systems, or hide the joys that fill the spaces between our real and imagined crises. When we’re laser-focused on what’s hard, it’s difficult to see the good. And none of us can afford that. Retreating to means finding your own space to experience the calm that returns our hearts, minds and bodies to equilibrium. It can mean literally escaping for a few days to a cabin in the woods, a shack on a remote shore, or a private “do not disturb” room in our own house—all of which can help us retreat to that quiet place in ourselves. Reading a book when there’s work to be done. Taking a slow, lavender-scented bath and staying in for the night instead of a quick shower before bolting out the door. Trying something slower, simpler, even if it feels boring at first. When I spent a month in China with my husband a few years ago, we learned about the Taoist concept and spiritual practice of wu wei. Literally translated as “no action” or “without effort,” it’s perhaps best understood as “effortless action” in which one moves through life in a natural way, without attempting to control or force a situation. One becomes fluid like water, and just as yielding and adaptive. A passage from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, or The Book of the Way and of Virtue, uses the metaphor of water to express the concept: The highest good is like water. Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive. It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao. [2] The concept of doing through non-striving has been written about for millennia, as attested by the Tao Te Ching. I myself was introduced to wu wei in China in terms of tai chi. Originally conceived as a martial art and still practiced as such, it’s now especially known across the world for its slow, fluid movements that provide exercise as well as physical calming and mental clarity. It’s a practice that walks the middle path, where good health lies. Movement and exercise are necessary for health, but pushing ourselves to the extreme—as I used to do as a professional long-distance mountain biker—can be hard on and even damaging to our bodies (just ask my arthritis-ridden left shoulder). It sounds like an extreme example, but how many of us aren’t currently preoccupied with some pain or stressor or worry that’s taking a physical and mental toll? Are we at war with our bodies, our neighbors, our coworkers? Perhaps it’s a sign that we need to hit the reset button, and practicing non-striving can do that. Whether we are suffering with an ailment, anxiety or the general exhaustion of keeping the machine of our lives running, we can retreat to that still place in us where resilience dwells. Sometimes when we stop trying so hard, we return to ourselves. Things get easier. And better. Where do you go and what do you do to find stillness? If it's hard to find the calm within, escaping to a quiet place for the weekend can be a good first step. Here are some of my favorite retreats in the Pacific Northwest:
Locharie Resort, Lake Quinault Shi Shi Beach, Neah Bay Doe Bay Resort, Orcas Island Snowgrass Lodge, Leavenworth Chatter Creek Campground [1] Lao-Tse, Tao Te Ching, Tr. James Legge (BN Publishing, 2007). Viewable here. [2] Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. By Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English (New York: Vintage Books, 1972) chapter 8, 1-3. I also like this very different translation from Derek Lin’s Tao Te Ching: Annotated and Explained (SkyLight Paths; 1st edition, 2006). Photos: Top: J.M.W. Turner, Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps, 1812; Second: Personal photo of the Naerofjord in Gudvangen, Norway; Third: Personal photo of Wedge Mountain, Leavenworth, WA. |