Walking the Trail on a Windy Day

Big wind today

Crazy excited about something

Clearing the air

Releasing the leaves, pollens and dead weight

From trees and bushes

and

Me.

Walking the trails

I encounter my past

Strewn about the pathways

In dizzying array.

Pea hail of Madrone blossoms

Gentle blue-snow dusting of California Lilac

Needles, cones and leftover leaves from the fall

Prints of canines and critters that have passed this way before

deeply embedded in dried mud.

Only crazy people walk in the woods on a windy day.

Squirrels scold and Jays sound the alarm

Trees creak, clank and moan

Consider releasing what no longer serves

Be it leaf, twig, bough or branch.

A few will give up altogether

Surrender their roots to time

Come crashing down to meet the earth

Face to face

Unless another stronger tree

Happens to catch them in their descent.

Crow or shadow – crow won’t tell

Hawks and crows surf the currents

(Oh, I know you won’t believe me

But just after I wrote that line,

Two crows dove dramatically

Within twenty feet of my window.

Where’s my camera

Where’s my camera

I’m not surprised

Crow medicine has been showing up lately.)

Songbirds dive like bullets

For the next safe haven

Strategize to avoid being blown sideways.

Falling leaves twirl like little girls in

New skirts with petticoats.

I swear I can hear their laughter.

On the trail, beneath the creaking trees

A splash of white feathers

Sign of angels

Sign of a kill.

After a time of solitude

The path is enlivened with neighbors

A trail runner

A couple and their show dogs

A couple with no dogs

A woman walking her horse.

Who dares walk on a windy day?

We do!

the walkers, the runners, the riders.

All that mental energy needs a bit of earth

A bit of dirt and trail under our feet

Some blazing sun to make us squint

And a good wind to face into.

I feel it pull my thinking right out

The tips of my wildly flying hair

And send it God only knows where.

I release an invocation

And let it fly on the wind as well.

I sing for all the butterflies

That emerge today,

Or on any windy day,

Who had no idea

It would be this blustery

Once they left the ground.

It’s a different kind of freedom

And freedom, none-the-less.

copyright (c) May 2010, Kathy J Loh, All Rights Reserved

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Windswept

(W)in(D)formation

Today, I’m letting the wind inform me. It’s wildly gusty up here in the hills. Leaves are riding the wind waves to the shore of my driveway (though a few pirouette in skyward spirals on updrafts). Anything that’s not tied down, is going to blow away, blow down or mercilessly get tossed around. From this side of the double-paned windows, it sounds like a parade of jets departing SFO. Nothing knows stillness on a day like today.

I’ve known big winds in my own life, the kind that knock you sideways. A few years ago, one of those winds cut me loose. I can’t say whether it was losing or finding my center that set me adrift. Maybe it was switching my notion of center, from an external to an internal point, that had this boat I call “me” slip away from its dock.

The old anchors of home, marriage, and career had, all three, changed at the same time. I came to know many harbors as I let the winds of change blow me around. I began to know myself without the old anchors. I began to know myself as a center among many centers in the whole of life. I built a relationship with the Divine through meditation, ritual and nature. Now, the wind, the trees, the blowing leaves, all speak to me and they pose a lot of questions.

Windswept (Kathy Loh)

Today, I am asked and asking:

What needs to be released?

Am I meeting the winds of change with rigidity or giving them room to move through me?

Do I hunker down, ride it in exhilaration or let it snap me in two?

How sound are my roots?

Where have I chosen to plant myself and how secure and nurturing is the ground beneath me?

Am I clinging precipitously to a hillside or have I chosen more solid conditions?

Will I offer welcome sanctuary to other windswept creatures?

When the wind roars at me, will I roar back? Will I laugh as loudly?

Am I willing to dance, glide and dive in rapturous joy?

All these little leaf-boats setting sail upon this wind…do they know their center?

Do they know they are loved?

I have a Brian Andreas StoryPeople® print that says “I spent a long time trying to find my center until I looked closely one night and found it had wheels and moved easily in the slightest breeze, so now I spend less time sitting and more time sailing.”

When I bought that print, I could only dream of a center with wheels. Over these last few years, I developed a sturdy set of wheels and I am no longer adrift. I’m sailing. Sometimes skillfully and all too often flailing, but I’m sailing.

Today, I am grateful for in-formation from the wind.

all words and images copyright (c) April 2009, Kathy Loh, all rights reserved
header photo by Kathy Loh

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