overdosing
“To leave my little cove was always sad,” Joan says, thinking once again back to her childhood. “My time there had been stolen and secret. I might even have to fib or dodge questions when I got home, but no matter. The cove was mine and it would always be there for me.”
“As is this pond,” I say. “Thank you for this day and insisting that we overdose our senses.”
“There really isn’t any other suitable way to be, is there, dear?”
I smile at her resolve. It occurs to me that I need to stop living on the surface or in the shallows, when drifting out over my head is always an option.”
(Joan Anderson, A Walk On the Beach, 64-65).
I read this book last week, and I can’t seem to decide which way to go: get another Joan Anderson book, or get a book written by Joan Erickson to whom so many words of wisdom and life are showcased in this book. When I go to town today to telecommute through email, and to pick up the week provisions to restock my cabin in the forest, I resist the library and the bookstore. It is intuition, I think, that urges me to write first, before continuing on my journey with these women I have discovered thanks to Jenna Hollander-Essig who pushed me into picking up this book to read. Women speaking to women speaking to women, and so it often goes, when I have least expected it, a voice awakens me into yet another transition in life. I wonder what this will be?
I am listening and seeing here. My senses are awake and functioning despite me. I have to remember to get out of my own way and let myself “overdose on my senses.” Joan Erickson had her cove; Joan Anderson had her pond. I have my camp and my kayak. Each ground me in reality. At camp I hear the hummingbirds before they show themselves at the feeder. I smell the bear ambling toward the front porch where I sit to write. He has been for a swim in the river and his ebony fur is slicked across his broad shoulders and down his back. His nose catches my scent before he hears me, and his dark eyes capture mine for an instant before he spins around and races pell-mell into the bushes. We have not met formally before, but I am more than convinced he is the little rascal who invaded this porch last week, knocked down some hanging plants, gnawed on a blueberry scented candle, and then, startled by my car turning into the driveway, crashed headfirst through the screen. He also had invaded my outhouse and crushed a berry-berry scented room deodorizer with his canine teeth, and stepped on and dented a can of raid that sprayed all over the toilet seat. It is that time for the mother bears to send their year and a half yearlings off on their own as they prepare to mate again. Such is the natural cycle. The young bears often have some adjusting to do, and this one has clearly started down a path that will lead to the very human label of “nuisance bear.” Funny, do we have such a label for our children?
Yes, I have rambled. The camp, or what many might call a cabin or a cottage, is open to
friends who stop by. Those who I invite to stay in one of my camps are only those who are comfortable with silence and darkness. This special place in the forest has an abundance of both, that are healing to the soul, I truly believe. Right now, as I write, a myriad of mosquitoes frantically seek a way through the screening, (which I repaired handily after the bear episode); the carbon dioxide I breathe out attracts them, according to my friend Robbie. Could be, and it sure makes for one not to want to breathe outside right now. The rains have hurried along the hatchings of these hungry little beasts and I am a potential full course meal. The white pines are silent right now, but I can make out a distant roll of thunder coming from the notch and echoing down the valley. We may be in for another series of storms soon. During the ones last week, the dead of night exploded into light as chain lightning danced through the valley and seemingly endless rolls of thunder shook my camp which is only perched on cement blocks and a granite ledge. The rain pounded horizontally, with intermittent bursts of pea sized hail dancing on my metal roof as if pleading to come in. I stoked my pot belly stove in response to the downward spiral of the temperature from 90 to 40 degrees in little more than an hour. One cat hid under the bed, but the other flattened himself in the chair next to me and scrunched his eyes shut tight.
This is camp. No moment is exactly like the next. It is always an adventure, and one that I cherish and do not control, but only have to open my senses and drink in with gratitude that life can be so vivid and momentous. I suppose it is like an “overdose of the senses” because no thought is necessary; but in fact, it is best to let all thoughts go and just receive. It is a humbling experience. And then there is the kayak.
The kayak---I have written about my adventures often. I have emotionally equated kayaking, and in fact, my green Loon kayak, with healing in my battle to survive. I have moved from that---from the thing, a kayak, to the process, kayaking. It goes beyond living each moment; it is living in the moment. Kayaking allows my body to take over, releasing my mind of all responsibility to monitor myself. It is a release I feel first in my shoulders, then my arms, my chest, my eyes, and my face. It is as if I had been clenching my teeth for days, and finally, stopped. The colors seem brighter; the forms of things beyond me take on a definition. I guess I can equate it, if I must, with the difference between analog and digital. I am aware this is an internal osmosis of the external. Every pore absorbs the energy outside of me, strokes my nerves into submission, and fills me up full. I am beginning to relinquish the need to explain. It just is and I am.
“As is this pond,” I say. “Thank you for this day and insisting that we overdose our senses.”
“There really isn’t any other suitable way to be, is there, dear?”
I smile at her resolve. It occurs to me that I need to stop living on the surface or in the shallows, when drifting out over my head is always an option.”
(Joan Anderson, A Walk On the Beach, 64-65).
I read this book last week, and I can’t seem to decide which way to go: get another Joan Anderson book, or get a book written by Joan Erickson to whom so many words of wisdom and life are showcased in this book. When I go to town today to telecommute through email, and to pick up the week provisions to restock my cabin in the forest, I resist the library and the bookstore. It is intuition, I think, that urges me to write first, before continuing on my journey with these women I have discovered thanks to Jenna Hollander-Essig who pushed me into picking up this book to read. Women speaking to women speaking to women, and so it often goes, when I have least expected it, a voice awakens me into yet another transition in life. I wonder what this will be?
I am listening and seeing here. My senses are awake and functioning despite me. I have to remember to get out of my own way and let myself “overdose on my senses.” Joan Erickson had her cove; Joan Anderson had her pond. I have my camp and my kayak. Each ground me in reality. At camp I hear the hummingbirds before they show themselves at the feeder. I smell the bear ambling toward the front porch where I sit to write. He has been for a swim in the river and his ebony fur is slicked across his broad shoulders and down his back. His nose catches my scent before he hears me, and his dark eyes capture mine for an instant before he spins around and races pell-mell into the bushes. We have not met formally before, but I am more than convinced he is the little rascal who invaded this porch last week, knocked down some hanging plants, gnawed on a blueberry scented candle, and then, startled by my car turning into the driveway, crashed headfirst through the screen. He also had invaded my outhouse and crushed a berry-berry scented room deodorizer with his canine teeth, and stepped on and dented a can of raid that sprayed all over the toilet seat. It is that time for the mother bears to send their year and a half yearlings off on their own as they prepare to mate again. Such is the natural cycle. The young bears often have some adjusting to do, and this one has clearly started down a path that will lead to the very human label of “nuisance bear.” Funny, do we have such a label for our children?
Yes, I have rambled. The camp, or what many might call a cabin or a cottage, is open to
friends who stop by. Those who I invite to stay in one of my camps are only those who are comfortable with silence and darkness. This special place in the forest has an abundance of both, that are healing to the soul, I truly believe. Right now, as I write, a myriad of mosquitoes frantically seek a way through the screening, (which I repaired handily after the bear episode); the carbon dioxide I breathe out attracts them, according to my friend Robbie. Could be, and it sure makes for one not to want to breathe outside right now. The rains have hurried along the hatchings of these hungry little beasts and I am a potential full course meal. The white pines are silent right now, but I can make out a distant roll of thunder coming from the notch and echoing down the valley. We may be in for another series of storms soon. During the ones last week, the dead of night exploded into light as chain lightning danced through the valley and seemingly endless rolls of thunder shook my camp which is only perched on cement blocks and a granite ledge. The rain pounded horizontally, with intermittent bursts of pea sized hail dancing on my metal roof as if pleading to come in. I stoked my pot belly stove in response to the downward spiral of the temperature from 90 to 40 degrees in little more than an hour. One cat hid under the bed, but the other flattened himself in the chair next to me and scrunched his eyes shut tight.
This is camp. No moment is exactly like the next. It is always an adventure, and one that I cherish and do not control, but only have to open my senses and drink in with gratitude that life can be so vivid and momentous. I suppose it is like an “overdose of the senses” because no thought is necessary; but in fact, it is best to let all thoughts go and just receive. It is a humbling experience. And then there is the kayak.
The kayak---I have written about my adventures often. I have emotionally equated kayaking, and in fact, my green Loon kayak, with healing in my battle to survive. I have moved from that---from the thing, a kayak, to the process, kayaking. It goes beyond living each moment; it is living in the moment. Kayaking allows my body to take over, releasing my mind of all responsibility to monitor myself. It is a release I feel first in my shoulders, then my arms, my chest, my eyes, and my face. It is as if I had been clenching my teeth for days, and finally, stopped. The colors seem brighter; the forms of things beyond me take on a definition. I guess I can equate it, if I must, with the difference between analog and digital. I am aware this is an internal osmosis of the external. Every pore absorbs the energy outside of me, strokes my nerves into submission, and fills me up full. I am beginning to relinquish the need to explain. It just is and I am.
posted by AYankee @ 11:21 AM
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