Mindfulness walks can be good, even on a muggy morning like we had on August 24th. I got to the preserve at 7:40am and the Weather Underground said it was a warm 80 degrees and a very muggy 78% relative humidity. And so I was grateful for anyone who arrived for the walk, focused on mindfulness and nature journaling. A little after 8:00, Sam, Annabelle, and I headed up to the boulder trail, noticing where the heat and drought were evident.
The NOAA Texas drought map shows that we are currently in moderate drought, even after a wet spring. This morning there were big cracks in the soil and many smaller plants were looking wilted. The oaks looked fine, with roots digging down into the sandstone where there is still some moisture.
One of the defining features of mindfulness is non-judgmental awareness. I read a short passage from Mark Coleman’s book, Awake in the Wild, regarding a reason for remaining non-judgmental when there is noise in a natural location where we don’t want human-generated noise. He talks about how our attention and reactivity to something we don’t like can keep us focused on the very thing we do not want to focus on. “I wish there was no traffic noise” can make us pay attention to it that much more. When we accept all of our experience without trying to push any of it away, we are more free to notice the good things around us. In Mindfulness in Texas Nature, I wrote about how, in a visit to Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve, the nearby traffic noise was a little challenging for me. But if you can let it go, it really fades into the background.
There was some beautiful bird song (Annabelle later identified one of the species as white-eyed vireo) and some morning shade to sit in, and we spent some time sitting or walking around the boulder trail. Then there was some time for journaling.
Writing or drawing in a nature journal is not quite the same as mindfulness in nature. When journaling, our attention is directed toward coming up with words or creating images on the page that reflect what we have experienced, and that can be a very valuable practice. I mentioned that in addition to creating a record of what is around us, a nature journal might include the part we play – how we perceive and react to our surroundings. Our reactions may involve recollections, grief over losses of species or worries about climate change, and other thoughts or emotions including joy and thankfulness.
It was a good time to recall the Thanksgiving Address, an invocation spoken by people of the Iroquois Confederacy. Many of us first discovered it in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass. I read the first two parts of the address that point out that “we have been given the duty and responsibility to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things” and “we are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life.” The address includes gratitude for the waters, the plants and animals, the four winds, the sun, grandmother moon, and other things.
And so, placed in that frame of reference toward everything around us, we spent the remaining few minutes writing in journals or considering what we might write, given more time. We had run a little past the allotted time, though the time seemed short.
This is a regularly scheduled activity at the preserve, so if you would like to join us next month, we would love to have you!