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The Ice Bath Meditations Series is over, even if the daily ice baths continue. So, I’ve been on the lookout for the next challenge. I quite like the month-long-commitment idea and this month I’m challenging myself to script a 3-5 minute musing each day, post it here, and publish it to my podcast. The difficulty is as much in keeping it short and concise as it is doing it daily. Another challenging aspect is writing/speaking/publishing when my life feels adrift and less to-the-point and tidy than I’d like it to be. 

And what I’d like “it” to be is the theme that has followed me throughout this day. 

I awoke to rain and puddles and dark skies, this after an unseasonably warm spell here in the Northwest where the sun has been shining and Spring felt like it had already arrived. 

I like sun. I like green foliage and blue skies. I like dry and firm trails. I like signs of life.

But as I hiked with Iris in the foothills after dropping the kids off at school in rainy darkness, we trod along trails and through scenery that was anything but what I like. 

Lots of gray and puddles and signs of things that have died and are decaying. Spring, where did you go?

I’ve been working with this labeling thing for awhile now. Working with being with life as it is as I am. Working with the reality that I can cause myself a lot of suffering with those second arrows of trying to find permanence in the impermanent, pushing away the things I don’t like, and clinging to the ones I do like.

So, as a cool and wet breeze soaked my skin, I decided to just look and see what was to be seen as we walked through the hollow.

It was striking how quickly I stopped wishing it were different.

In fact, as I let go of the desire for Spring to show up here and now, I became attuned to the distinctly different sounds of the rain as it landed on various surfaces. I noticed reflections in puddles. I smelled sagebrush and wet dirt. I saw tiny birds flying ahead of us, landing, and then flying again as we approached them. I saw changing hues of gray as the sun - unseen behind the clouds - still brought a semblance of light to the scene. 

I got down close to the ground to see it all from another perspective. I brushed my hand against rabbitbrush along the trail. I listened to the sound of Iris’s breathing and watched the joyful wagging of her tail as she explored and then returned to me, over and over. I felt a smile of contentment and peace spread across my face and heart. 

There was a sense of all being all right. That even in what looks like a barren and dead landscape, there is a seasoned knowing of cycles - cycles that come hard at us in this place we live whether we like it or not. Cycles of birth, growth, stability, decay/decline, death, rebirth. Seasons of life and the many things that “life” means.

Perhaps I am slowly coming to sense that I like letting things be the way they are better than I like any particular thing at all.

I’ll just let that be.