Goosebumps...Not Goosepoop

Meditation, though having a dictionary definition, means different things to different people. It is thought of both loosely and rigidly, abstractly and specifically. Sort of in line with the nature of meditation. It can be done with the eyes open or closed. It can be done sitting, standing, walking, laying. It can be done contorted like a warm, salty soft pretzel. It can be whatever it is to you, and to those of you who meditate, that sounds about right (though some would attempt to argue it is one way, and one way only..."if you do it right", that is).

I used to do it one way, until I was shown another way, and I liked that way. Yes, I did. Very much. This week I had planned to use that way five different times in nature. I wanted to have conversations with nature, not by actually doing so, but by not having any conversation at all...with nature. The anti-conversation would become the ultimate conversation. Beautiful. But alas, there has surfaced a new way.

I have been very busy this week conversing with nature. In particular, I was very busy with it today. I have been acutely aware of this drought lately and have been remarking to myself that I am witnessing nature killing nature. As is the natural cycle, I suppose. The sun, the heat, the air, and a dramatic lack of precipitation have led to a rapid and dramatic loss of life in this area of our planet. Everywhere you look it's beige where green was not so long ago. Everywhere. I guarantee you gardeners have had to dead-head more marigolds this month than you can remember in ages- if ever. Walk through the grass without shoes. Try it. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch...like walking on fallen pine needles. It itches. It stings. Earth's blanket has been scorched by weeks of heat without water, leading up to today's temperature over a hundred, with no rain in sight, and another sweltering day on its way. The river is drying up; the creeks are already there; and I went from grape to raisin in record time today.

There was an almost audible sigh from the plants in my mother's garden as I watered them at sunset, hoping to give them a fighting chance by letting them revel in it overnight. A few hours earlier and the water would have evaporated on its way out of the hose. A practice I always consider to be meditative, it was particularly satisfying today. I couldn't get to the next plant fast enough when I started. I said to them collectively in silence, "I'm coming! Try to be patient! I will get to all of you, I promise! I know it hurts! It's going to be okay!" They were so grateful. Yes, I truly believe that, because I heard them...I felt it. It was like that scene toward the end of Beetlejuice when they're withering away to dust in front of everyone, and the spell releases them just in time for rejuvenation. I was there with those plants. I needed water too, and I felt for them, and we are all a little more alive then we had been before.

It was my best friend's birthday today. After watering the garden and putting my son to bed, having made a pot of fresh coffee (why we are crazy enough to drink hot coffee when it's a hundred degrees out is beyond me, but it just has to be done...every day, we had a conversation worthy of saying that it was between our natural selves.A conversation you don't have with everyone- not because you can't, or because you would lie about it- there are simply few other human beings in our lives that share certain parts of us. And that is why they are our closest friends. It may still have been indescribably hot, aided by the hot coffee, but we remained on the porch, only to end up seeing eleven UFOs in just over two hours.

That's right. Unidentified Flying Objects. By unidentified, I mean that they were not planes, nor were they helicopters, or hot air balloons, or meteorites, or whatever else. It was the first time in my life that I have seen something in the sky that I cannot explain away. Their patterns of movement were incredible. Their speed and color were new to me. It was like watching a movie, but above my own head, and with UFO number three, every hair on my body stood up. Goosebumps. After the first five, we were on sky watch until it was time to go, amid lessons about stars and space, and conversations about our place in the universe.

I love getting goosebumps...the kind you get when you experience something amazing or particularly moving. The kind you get that feel significant in that moment, and chances are, whatever it was that gave you goosebumps will not soon be forgotten.

As I sit here finishing this Friday afternoon, it is easily hotter than it was yesterday. Hazier too. So, that would make it what? Somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand degrees out here? Poor plant life...it's so thirsty. Poor people who have no choice but to live and sleep outdoors in weather like this...they're so thirsty...and that's a wild understatement.

I spend another day conversing with nature, getting as close to the heart of these relationships as I can. The energy between me and these dying blades of grass, between you and that cloud, between the goose and the fish, between the air and the ground, between me and you and you and you and you- between us and all of it- gives me goosebumps. I love goosebumps.

Conversations about nature, with nature, and among nature. Conversations with all things natural becoming natural. From one piece of nature to another, stay cool and hydrated today. Love to all things.