Dear Reader:

Was that a hint of autumn in the air today?   Yes.  I think so.   As you know, I adore spring, somewhat enjoy summer,  am thrilled by autumn and, aside from the lovely effects of the first 2 or 3 snowfalls, tolerate winter.   Being on the cusp of autumn always brings back some of my best and favorite memories from childhood.  I was a child who loved school.   I loved walking home from the bus stop and stopping by my "hideout" in the woods.  I loved passing by the houses with the little wisps of smoke coming from the chimneys.   I loved the sounds of the neighborhood kids playing four square while I was working on my homework or practicing piano or, maybe, preparing to go out and play myself.   I loved looking through the Fall catalog from JC Penney with my mom and imagining all of those lovely people with the lovely clothes going apple or pumpkin picking and drinking hot cider.   Maybe it's because I'm a West Virginia girl, and let's face it, West Virginia does autumn better than anywhere else.    Autumn was the season that we would start firing up the wood stove in the family room.   Fall was when my older brothers were busy and active with all of their high school/college friends and barely tolerated the interest of a little sister in all of those friends and activities.   Even now, I can close my eyes and recall that walk home from the school bus.   I can almost reach out and touch the "climbing tree" at the edge of Shearer's field beside the college president's house (Greystone.  Because college president's houses have names, you guys.).   I can trace the path from the Arnett's house through the woods to the side of the Seaton's house where I would emerge from having imagined that I was a nomadic forest Traveller to see the outlines of my house.  


Speaking of autumn and the preparation of the harvest and the gradual movement of the natural world into dormancy...  (I know you were all speaking of that just now, dear reader. :))....  I have recently been doing some reading on the subject of hibernation.   I love science and I love evolution.   So, what I've learned is that hibernation developed as an evolutionary strategy for smaller animals to avoid the enormous energy loss associated with migration.   Also, I learned that some animals hibernate in summer.   It's called estivation.   This is all ridiculously fascinating to me.    I will now present you with some pictures of hibernating animals.  Because, well, LOOK AT THEM:

Two tiny hedgehogs and a dormouse.  You are welcome.

Anyway, as I am likely to do on a daily basis,  I started pondering the concept of hibernation (I saw it somewhere defined as "a survival strategy designed to conserve energy when conditions are harsh") and tried to turn it into some poetic concept about my own emotional life right now.   I realize that I am sometimes just insufferable with all of this constant desire to find MEANING in everything.   Bear with me.  (Ha, ha, ha, ha.  Did you see how I just used the word BEAR?  We were just talking about hibernation, dear reader.  I. Am. Such. A. Goofball.)

One of my friends told me, yesterday, that she has really started noticing what an introvert I am because she can see me becoming exhausted with the effort of being present with her after a few hours of togetherness.   Now, at first I felt guilty and rather lame about this.  But, then when I pondered it further, I realized that I am expending an awful lot of energy lately to be OK.  This happens to everyone at various points in life.   I know this.  It has happened to me in the past.  And, my inability to stay "present" with her for a long period of time, while typical of my introversion, is more extreme these days because the energy required to keep me functional has gone into hyperdrive.   Let me hasten to add that I AM actually remaining functional and am often emotionally tranquil lately.   What I had not really verbalized to myself was what that has been costing me.   I find myself craving solitude.  Real solitude.   I find it in certain key places:  on the Salt Trail on Tuesday mornings, in uninterrupted piano practice at the office, when my kids are watching Scooby Doo and I am curling up in a fetal position on my bed from 6:00-6:30 virtually every week day, when I am writing on this blog.   These are my hibernation stations.    I've been thinking about swimming at the college pool on Fridays at noon.  Swimming has always been a lovely way for me to separate myself from the hustle and bustle of my busy life.   Reading does that, too, but I need a space where I can be uninterrupted in that and this is a hard thing to come by in my life these days.   All of these spaces are spaces where I can be in relationship with myself without thinking of my responsibilities to others (friends, kids, colleagues, students, family).   I need that kind of personal refuge.  Solitude can be so helpful in filling me up so that the other wonderful relationships that I have in my life become easier and more joyfully maintained.   When I don't have enough of this kind of solitude or when the circumstances of my life become more challenging, emotionally, for all kinds of reasons, I start to fall back into my unconscious numbing behaviors.  

So...I am trying to find more spaces where I can use solitude and presence with myself to allow me to live more healthy and joyful days.    And, right now, I need to hibernate MORE to allow this to happen.   So, I am making it a priority.   I have been reading a book called "True Refuge:  Finding Peace and Freedom in your own Awakened Heart" by Tara Brach.   Yes, dear intellectual readers, I do understand that this makes me sound like I am a hippie living in a commune, but seriously, it is a good book.    Here's the quote that relates to this need to be present with oneself:

"A willingness to be present with one's inner life, no matter how painful, makes it possible to connect with the vastness of love.  A growing capacity for presence, for staying with the truth of one's moment-to-moment experience, enables one to find one's way home, even in the midst of great loss or pain."

Yes.  That.  

OK.   This blog has, lately, been back and forth from deep (or not-so-deep as the case may be) musings and battle plans for calories and exercise and fitness goals.   I apologize for not being able to keep a consistent narrative strain going right now.   I might find my way back to that in the future.  But, thank you dear reader, for sticking with me and helping me create a space of "solitude" that also, paradoxically, allows me to connect with other people.   Unique, I tell you.

Here's a poem that I read (about autumn, of course) that I think I'll need to read many more times before I plumb its total depths:

The Beautiful Changes -- Richard Wilbur

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne's Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things' selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.


Thanks for reading!