I played hooky yesterday. A hot sunny day in October is too grand a gift to squander staring at a computer screen. Also, I needed a break from the news, from my anger and sorrow and despair over the events in Israel and Gaza.
So I spent the day in the park. Usually when I’m in the park, I’m doing something. I’m walking the dog or taking a walk with someone. I’m riding my bike. I’m looking for things to write about or photo opportunities. I’m visiting a museum or garden or attending an event. I’m on my way somewhere. Yesterday, I took the luxury of just being there, doing nothing.
“There” for a good part of the day was Mallard Lake, just off MLK Drive. It’s a good spot to leave the world behind. The gurgle of a little stream that feeds the lake helps drown out the sound of cars. Not many people visit it; there’s no path by the road and the trail around the back side can be muddy and overgrown.
I settled onto a bench, with my husband, and we let ourselves sink into the place. I found if you’re quiet enough, and just really sit and listen and watch, you can enter park time, a pace off the clock, outside human activity. As Jenny Odell writes in “Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock,” “Given the opportunity to slow own, what I find is not slowness per se, but simply what has been happening all along, just outside my perception.”
Across the lake from us, there was a heron that stood motionless on a pile of branches sticking out over the water, its wings outstretched to dry in the sun. Its stillness helped it blend in with the bare trees around it. Eventually, it stretched its neck. Later, it raised a great claw and scratched at its beak a few times. Later, it yawned. Later, it tucked in its wings and struck a new frozen pose. Meanwhile, two turtles languidly made their way through the water, only their tiny heads visible. A sparrow of some sort popped onto the tree by us, then darted away, its wings a blur. Soon it was back, then off, then back, then off. A pair of mallards glided toward the bank. Their heads bobbed up and down as they turns dipping their beaks in the water. The male chased the female, dunked her under and then paddled a wide circle around her. Every movement in the lake — the birds, the turtles, the skittering bugs — sent ripples across its surface, scattering the reflections in the water into a pixilation of blues and greens and golds.
An orange and black butterfly floated past and on up the overhanging hill with its blanket of nasturtiums. A belted kingfisher chittered. A warbler sang. Then came the sweet song of a golden crowned sparrow. Than the scream of a red-tailed hawk. A spider dropped a line of silk from a nearby branch. The lines of an old web strung between some twigs glowed in the sunlight. The sparrow lighted on the branch again.
The moments flowed one into the next like syrup, unhurried and unmarked. Only a couple of hours had passed, but it felt much longer. By the time I got home I felt nourished and ready — almost — to get back on the clock.
LOVED this! Especially loved being ushered - by the heron - into “park time”: “later… later…”
Meanwhile, wanted to share this passage from Zen writer John Tarrant’s book *The Light Inside the Darkness.* I love what he says about the “wilderness within”:
“The interior life is a place of the wild, uncivilized and unpredictable, giving us fevers, symptoms, and moments of impossible beauty. Yet within the appearances of chaos are both a richness and a deep level of orderliness. Like a national park, the interior world doesn't do anything-it is the treasure-house of life. It can't be strip-mined for our conscious purposes. The only request it makes of us is that we love it, and, in return, it responds to our attention. To learn to attend well is to discover our place in the natural order: it brings an element of consistency and harmony to our lives and gives us a story about who we are. To learn to attend is a beginning. To learn to attend more and more deeply is the path itself.
“For aboriginal people, a wilderness is not something alien but a kind of blessed garden. As our attention deepens, we too come to harmonize with existence, learn to see the thin vine that has a tuber underneath or to follow the direction of the birds at sunset to a waterhole. Gradually we change. Our listening becomes more acute, we hear background as well as foreground noises, and we are no longer so surprised by the animals-the fears and longings of our inner life-and do not complain that someone else has caused their rough ways. When our attention is offered freely, the inner life in return becomes a friend to comfort and sustain us. Gradually, through our offered attention, we connect with the source out of which we came-we become aboriginal to
ourselves, discovering how much we love our own inwardness.”
Loved this. Thank you for this reminder to go to nature? Why do we forget it’s in nature like this that we can feel restored by life? The funny thing is, that while their place is slow compared to most of ours, the lake you beautifully described was so busy!