2.5
September 2, 2013

Let Beauty Bring You Home: Again & Again & Again. ~ Emily Lodge

Three times now this doe has plopped down—literally sat–on the hill just above our deck and watched calmly while I practice yoga.

She stares unblinkingly while I flow through sun salutations and weeble-wobble in tree pose.

I stare back.

I’m not sure what to think of it. Do deer do this regularly? So familiar with humans, now they are the benevolent peeping Toms of our neighborhood?

I feel blessed by her presence.

Could it be that meditating so much out here, facing a beautiful, tall-treed Maryland forest has made my energy fuse with the wildlife? Ha ha. Now I’ve gone full hippie.

Seriously though.

Right now she is staring me down, kindly, while I type. She has long since won the staring contest. Her ears rove back and forth as she listens to the birds, chomps on leaves that are within reach—all the while not taking her eyes off me.

Now another, bigger doe has sat down about 10 yards deeper in the brush and is staring my way too, albeit with a slightly wary look in her eye. Somehow I’ve been initiated into the cloven-hoofed gang and we are now chillaxin’ and relaxin’ together.

Maybe it’s time I took that three month hike through the Appalachians. I could become the female Mowgli and run with the herd—teach them deer yoga. Maybe I have been reading too much John Muir.

“Surely all God’s people, however serious or savage, great or small, like to play. Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats and invisibly small mischievous microbes—all are warm with divine radium and must have lots of fun in them.” ~ John Muir

My mind turns back to the negativity that I had initially stepped out on the deck to mull over, and it suddenly seems so trivial. I don’t know if my forest friend considers me as a friend, or if I simply happen to be peeping into her living room. But she has taken my mind off the small things—quieted the inner voice that wants to second guess everything.

Thanks, Deery.

I wish I could hold onto this feeling of oneness forever.

I can grasp it during meditation or on a hike and keep it for awhile, maybe. Slowly but surely the hustle-bustle world carries it away. I have less hustle in my life than most—I teach yoga and get plenty of free time in between classes. Nevertheless, I still get caught up in the mind-struggle of what I should be doing. I should be busy. Cleaning. Cooking the mountain of fresh fruits that are slowly turning from over-ripe to rot. Should be writing a journal entry. Practicing yoga, ukelele, coming up with new classes, playlists and on and on.

Ahhh see there’s the culprit—should. Somehow my mind was able to turn fun hobbies into stressors. I love doing all those things. Even cleaning—if the Pandora reggae station is blasting.

Sometimes we just need a break from the norm, the routine, whatever it us. Take time out in the beauty and simplicity of nature. Find that connection to life. Go back to reality and remember that sometimes we shouldn’t.

“When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.” ~ John Muir

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Assistant Ed: Wendy Keslick/Ed: Sara Crolick

{Photo: via Destinee Montague}

 

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