Good morning! I lay awake for near to an hour listening to robins outside my windows, and Maria purring beside me. I lay there, and as the robinic chorus increased in number and volume, I began thinking about my job, my last job, the one from which I retired quite a few years ago now, and that I had held for 28 years. Fifteen years into my working life, it involved a complete change to my presumed career path; it was not a route I expected to take, and typical to my way of being, not the one planned.
I thought, hmm, I think I am going to share about it in a blog post. I started remembering it–what it comprised, who my fellow employees–my colleagues, reportees, bosses, intimates and not-so-intimates–were, where I traveled for it, what I accomplished, what I didn’t–and then the sparrows woke up and began their less than tuneful, but certainly neighborly chirps and chips, and Maria began tapping me, and the clock marked 4:45AM, and I said, okay, I am getting up, I am going to write the blogpost, but, nope, not about my job. Because, really, who cares?
I can’t answer that question. I am not in your head, nor yours, nor yours. But, more I will just say, I met and knew a lot of people I like a lot. I traveled to local and somewhat distant places in this country, learned different takes on what I thought I was profoundly knowledgeable and right about, learned how much being the rightest in the room isn’t always possible, and surely isn’t always necessary, nor, in fact, right. I am grateful for this job, these people, these 28 years with them, and very grateful for now, sitting at this desk, at this very old laptop, looking out into the curtain of my weeping birch trees, and listening.
Thus–this morning, this day. The sparrows just, maybe 30 seconds ago, stopped their chorus. I need to go out to the kitchen to listen for the finches and mourning doves, who are likely emerging now, with substantially quieter voices than the sparrows and the robins. So I am pausing for a bit.
I’m thinking I may tell you about a bicycle trip I took in the US Southwest about 24 years ago. It was a magnificent trip, experience, time. I do want to suggest now–never let your body and head conspire to tell you you can’t. Your body may tell you so, and if it does by itself, probably listen and accommodate. But if your head is part of the telling, close your ears, step away! By listening, you will only divert yourself from something you can do.
For seven days we bicycled to and hiked into and out of Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, Zion Canyon. In Bryce, traipsed among the hoodoos! I had before seen them from above, but to wander among them, and to wonder. At the Grand Canyon, to meander down to the river, kicking up ancient dust, steadying oneself on rock millenia-billenia-zillenia old, and, when seen from across the canyon, so many hues, yet here among it, just present and touchable. Ah yes. In Zion, trouped through the Virgin River and Gorge at dawn, ankle, knee deep, prickles of cold in a day that then climbed to barely bearable heat. Climbed a ridge to a place called Scout Lookout, reaching that height, at times by scrabbling on hands and knees. And on the way, while pedaling to and between these canyons, passing through red, rose, dusky, bisque, beige, golden, tan, ecru, magenta, ochre, umber, rouge walls near and distant, miles of floor, with a single roundhead, glaringly green tree poised mid-desert offering brief shade. Naming places on the horizon and at hand–Escalante, Angel Canyon, Kanab, Panguitch.
And, not wandering so far from home, pedaling here, in Massachusetts, pedaling beside Hondas, Mercedes, Hyundais, Nissans, Mazdas, Fords, Rams and Jeeps, F150s and Tundras, turning off, leaving rubber-on-road rumblings and pedaling beside and under tall red oaks, red maples, cottonwoods, aspens, white and red pines, hemlocks, spruces, green ashes, white oaks, black oaks, yellow poplars, paper birches, grey birches, black birches, copper beeches. Dismounting and whisper stepping within pine woods, shushing through deciduous woods. Stopping and fingering mud and packed, sodden, not-yet-mud tree-fern-reed-shrub leaves; standing before a bird-shelter and feast riddled once thriving pine counting its ladder of holes, squatting before a long fallen oak to visit its four and six and eight legged residents, before a spider web and its captives. Discovering.
Morning has broken, like the first morning… It is 9:45am. I have breakfasted, enjoyed coffee, sat through a thunderstorm, and here we are. 9:46am now. Sending to you.
whereIwonder&why 