Tag: birding

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

~ Robert Frost

My dad spoke this entire poem aloud as we sat at the exit of the rehab hospital, looking out the window at the emergence of spring, waiting for the ride to get him home.

When I made a crack about “nothing gold can stay” being perhaps not the most uplifting of lines, he came back with “assumptions about Frost being a sunny, feel-good poet” being off base and the like – the sharp engagement with language and writing and expression was clearly intact. So good to know after some 6 weeks of hospital turmoil.

The rehab hospital offered some particularly fine moments – taking dad out for walks through the verdant Willowdale grounds as spring sprung. I downloaded an app of bird song, just to know who exactly was singing so brightly as we wandered from one corner of the gardens to another. There were robins of course, the occasional jay, a waxwing, and several variations on sparrows – the prettiest being the Song Sparrow as opposed to the House Sparrow or the Common Sparrow. But one day there was a fleeting moment of Goldfinch… oh, what a magical name. Must be the gold reference.

In the mornings before heading up to the hospital, I started a practice of sitting on the benches facing the lake and doing 10 minutes or so of meditation.

I have an app for that too, don’t ya know. So I sit there with my headphones on and do my best to clear the mind.

The guided meditations in my app do your basic bringing attention to the breath, but they have a few other tricks to help with the incessant Thinking Thinking Thinking of the brain. My favourite so far is to “become aware of the sounds” that are all around you. Recognize that you cannot stop the hearing of the sounds, that there is a part of you hearing the sounds – your consciousness – and your consciousness is hearing sounds whether you will it to or not. And then be in touch with that part of yourself that is simply hearing sounds and simply carries on breathing all day long. Something that is always there no matter what thought is going on in your mind.

For some reason I see this “consciousness” thing, this place that is somewhere behind and beyond the Thinking Mind, as a kind of vagus nerve shape…

…something that includes and yet is deeper and more extensive than the brain.

I dunno – maybe this image will change over time as I do more meditation, we’ll see.

But there is something about the realizing that sound is happening all around all the time whether or not you are paying attention to it, and using that as a way past the thinking that works better for me than trying a similar thing with the visual world. I guess I’m so visually oriented that analysis jumps in very quickly. As soon as I open my eyes my mind starts in with the ideas: “Would this scene before me make a compelling image?” ” “Is this interesting to look at or not so much?”

Anyways, dad went home that day from the rehab hospital and was home for a few weeks before he ended up in yet another emergency department, and was then admitted to hospital again, and is now in “transitional care”. A bit of a holding zone while he builds his strength again and we work on a more sustainable plan.

Meanwhile, on a weekend getaway to a friend’s cottage, I pulled out the birdsong app, and was brought back into the joy of birds… Hello!!!

So many different birds outside of the city!!!

Yes, plenty of robins and jays, but then there was an Eastern Phoebe! A Northern Flicker! And when I thought I was hearing the Northern Flicker again, no, no, turns out that was a Yellow-Bottomed Warbler!!! Such a world of variety.

And so many elaborate swirling marks when their calls are expressed as waveforms –

Well, I soon realized that the birdsong app, as fun and charming as it is, is also a way of being in that very analytical part of the brain, of not relaxing back into a more experiential way of being in the moment.

And I have to say, I do find water – and the glittering play of light on water – a kind of short cut to clearing the mind and simply being. Being in the present moment.

Nothing gold can stay.