Tag Archives: Nature

On My Mind

Glow

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The weather gave us a gift this weekend. We had sun, blue skies, and temperatures perfect for being outside. (Although nothing really seems to stop Germans from being outside, which I like very much.) I was out late Sunday morning revisiting a route I’d taken with a friend some weeks ago. We had looked in vain for sunshine that day and the walk was bound to feel different this time.

One thing I have always noticed about walking with my camera is that my senses are sharper, and not just my eyes. I see the world differently, but am also more aware of how it tastes, how it smells, how it feels, and where I stand within it.

In other words, the more present I am, the calmer and more peaceful I feel. The camera around my neck acts as a reminder. Likewise, the more experienced I become in meditation, the more easily awareness seeps into my everyday life. I pause more frequently, slow down, notice, breathe. This is what it means to be mindful.

Lately there have been several loving-kindness, or metta, meditations in my routine. The warmth that I experience through these practices is not unlike the warmth I experienced last weekend in the sun. The world opens wide and it calls.

What I like most about metta meditation is that it makes obvious our connection with one another. There is a physical sensation, a warm glow, that comes from that realization.

There is a warm glow that comes from wishing loving-kindness to others, similar to the sense of rejuvenation that comes from being in nature. I have learned that these are needs for me, needs rather than wants. I would like to think that I am a better person to those around me for having learned this and sought this out.

It is easy to form connections that are light and fun, to play outside on a sunny day. It is not always so easy to get out in the rain or cold, not always so easy to touch another person. But so often, it is the experience of doing exactly this, of embracing difficult conditions and searching for the light, that plants us firmly on the ground.

And this is when we can not only look, but see.

Germany

Eyes on Fall

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I feel a bit like a little kid; there’s a new season called fall and I’m playing in it all over again. (Some of you know this season as autumn rather than fall, and my favourite dictionary provides a lovely explanation as to why this might be.)

At the end of October, my Toronto family and I went for a beautiful walk an hour or so north. There was so much that reminded me of growing up and playing on the nature trails not too far from our neighbourhood. We used to climb all of the fallen logs and run through piles of leaves.

Regardless of the word you use to describe this time of year, this is the season of falling leaves and the crunch they make underfoot, of apples picked from trees and pumpkins from vines. The texture of the air changes, daylight grows shorter, shadows grow longer. Food gets warmer, coats thicker, and lush green gives way to all shades of red, orange, yellow, and finally brown before the leaves are gone entirely.

In Montreal at the beginning of November, further north and further into the season, the leaves were different yet again. Montreal is a city of bright skies and the colours made me smile at a time when smiling was difficult.

I took a walk through the park near my apartment in Weimar shortly after returning from Canada. The steel-grey sky and occasional drizzle reminded me why this time of year, just too early to start thinking about the holidays, is sometimes overlooked. But the calm and quiet of the path minimized distraction and held opportunities to experience beautiful things.

Here in Weimar, now definitively in the middle of November, we have had some very cold nights. And days, for that matter, but it’s dark at night here, very dark, and I’ve been spending time outside remembering what cold feels like. Damp cold that gets into the bones, crisp cold that leaves fingers, toes, and noses tingling, and then a brief respite from temperatures just above freezing that seem balmy by comparison. There is majesty in clear skies and sharp, brisk nights and seeing so many stars.

It’ll get colder, everyone says. Get ready.

I’m not.

But in the dark and the cold, surrounded by naturechanges and beneath stars, my body, mind, and heart are very much awake.

“Lift your gaze and linger.”
Weimar, Germany – November 2021

Germany

A Week in the Thüringer Wald

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A couple of weeks ago, I joined a group of students for a week in the Thüringer Wald, or Thuringian Forest. Our trip was their first group outing since Covid, and it was a delight to be in a reasonably rustic environment with young people who were both comfortable in that context and genuinely glad to be there.

This campground relies significantly on volunteer labour for renovation work and there was a great deal to do. This wasn’t the type of trip where we were doing that, but I think it would have been good fun.

It was dark at night and we were able to see the Milky Way and the Big Dipper, though my photography skills and equipment cannot attest to that. We also made a fire every night, making for a much warmer evening than we would have had otherwise. There’s poetry in sitting under the stars in the cold, but there’s comfort in sitting under the stars with a fire.

While the afternoons were largely free, we had activities planned each morning. A real highlight was the hike led by the campground director, Dagmar. She taught us about the bark beetles that are killing the young trees here in the beautiful Thüringer Wald. The devastation is occurring rapidly in part because of the monoculture that was once common here for logging. It was really sad to see so much empty hillside and to think about the consequences, such as landslides and flooding, that occur under these conditions, also making it really difficult to grow new trees. And trying to do so when they’re being attacked by bark beetles is, as we learned, no easy task.

It’s also interesting to contrast the immediate environment of the valley where our camp was situated with the forest conditions around a village just 15 minutes away by car. (And, for that matter, the stunning environs in yet another part of the Thüringer Wald where I’ve been twice to climb.)

One thing I am really enjoying about Germany is how much it looks just like you might expect from a travel brochure. A walk on our penultimate day from one town to a bus stop in another town was a lot of work on hills but they were really pretty hills.

On the last day, only about an hour from school, we spent the afternoon by a lake. There’s so much here that is a fairy tale – berries and mushrooms in forests that people just happily pick, for example – and it has been so lovely experiencing it all.

This part of the state of Thüringen (Thuringia) is right on the border with Bayern (Bavaria). You know that place. Home of Oktoberfest. Indeed.

After so much time on the Little Red Dot that is fully part of my heart, it’s a real gift to be somewhere else. I’m looking at the world with different eyes and for that, I am grateful.