First Rain

We are so happy when it happens, ideally on a sleepy morning cuddled under the covers. First, there is the sound, that gentle splashing of water on roofs, decks, lawns.

It begins slowly, and perhaps you think it's drippy fog. But no, this morning it was genuine, grade AA raindrops. Then, an hour into the moist symphony of sprinkles, the rhythm picked up and it is Rain, Blessed Rain, for real.

Little birds wake up and trill their delight, fluffing their feathers between splashes, feeding on freshly washed seeds. Each drop lands with a perfect still note, a precious daub of wetness touching earth, stream, tree and flower.

Precipitation is protection here, the beginning of the end of late summer when we review our valuables - packing them into boxes next to the front door for a quick exit in case of forest fire.

So the rain means freedom from worry, as well as a time to reflect on yet another turn of the seasons.

I sit up in bed, drink coffee and pet my cat, relishing a moment of domestic bliss. All the beings in the garden rejoice in the refreshment.

Now I must sacrifice comfort for adventure. Out the door to dance on the grass, to lift my head to the heavens, to wash my soul in the freshest, purest water there is.

and from e.e. cummings:

...nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands -- from W, 1931

What would Kipling do?

It's an odd phenomenon that when friends go away, we can find ourselves integrating into our lives what they have taught us by example. It's a kind of psychic sloughing, where special cells merge, and some of their essence lives on in us. 

Our animal friends revel in the moment, which is their great gift. Their core simplicity can show us how to live and love, with compelling presence. 

Free of human passions like envy, deceit, avarice or doubt -  unworried by image, how many toys they have, or what it all means, they live full and contented lives. Sometimes you can see they are bored or maybe lonely, but they're always willing to respond to your attention.

I miss my four-legged friend Kip in the mornings when he would go out in the garden to gaze at the sea, or in the evenings when he would greet me with a big wet kiss. I miss him on long road trips when he'd rest his nose on my forearm as I drove for miles and miles. His soulful eyes are always with me, as is his canine smile. 

Once, when arriving at an exclusive spa south of Partington, that place with the sulfur baths, what's it called again ? ?  We were stopped at the entrance with a scowl, and were told that I could come in, "but not the animal". I looked at Kip in the back seat and I swear he did a double-take as if to say, "Who, me? An animal?" And then the guard recognized him, granting us access after all. "Oh, it's Kipling," he said happily, and that was all that was needed.

My goal now is to embody Kip's enthusiasm, simplicity and trust in life. His ability to drink in the beauty of where we live, his playfulness and his glowing, deep loyalty to those he loved. And Kip loved everyone. Some more than others, of course, but everyone was of interest to him, an opportunity to love and be loved. If he followed you with his eyes, greeted you with a lick, or sang out to you when you appeared, jumping up and down with joy, then you knew you were special. 

The mantra I use to keep him close is WWKD? What would Kipling do? And then I must act honorably and simply.

I still see him at the end of the driveway when I come home; in profile, his royal white ruff fanned out below his gently inclined head. Waiting for me. My most profound hope is that I get to see him again someday. We'll take a lovely stroll to our favorite spot, then sit in the sun on the grass together.

Kipling Rowland-Jones 1999 - 2013

Church of the Sunset

At the end of my days, will I say simply that I watched a lot of glorious sunsets? Could this be enough?

When I was a young thing fresh out of college running wild in the Berkeley hills I watched sunsets. A group of us met several times a week above the Lawrence Hall of Science to celebrate the sun sinking into the San Francisco Bay. We'd jump-start the evening with a splashy orange glow. A different sunset for every night.

Infinite combinations of clouds, sun, moon, stars, and jet planes echoed the dramas of our small, ever-changing group of friends. We called ourselves the Sunset Club.

One friend from that time, a lovely lost Irishman who came to California by way of Liverpool, had a trove of poems he shared. One fragment stays in my mind, written to his wife: "To find you I came this far, to where the sun sinks into the Pacific like an old man at a spa."

Now witnessing the timeless passage of the sun below the horizon is a life-long ritual, my Church of the Sunset. And yet I ask myself, on quiet evenings, is this pleasure perhaps, too simple?

Sensing the  planet turning away from the sun is essentially passive. You have to stop, be present, maybe enjoy a glass of champagne, and express gratitude for the day. It would seem that there's not a lot of action required to observe nature. And yet, cultivating stillness is a major achievement in a world where we are quite possibly more distracted than ever before.

Do I go outside to see celestial bodies at dusk or dawn? Or do I turn to the internet for pages of news and gossip? It's a measure of how pervasive contemporary gadgets are that even here in Big Sur we face these questions.

These days, I find I watch the sunrise as often as the sunset, mysterious but true. The pink light of dawn  floats at the horizon, above the fog rolling in from the sea. This tender display gently caresses me awake, leading me outside. My feet touch the cool grass, my cats nap on garden chairs, birds chatter and sing out, hummingbirds zoom up to the feeder. The day begins.

And I remember another poem, this one by Rumi -

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you:

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

There, and Back Again

A wonderful way to feel greater presence is to buy a ticket, take a trip, and enter a new world. So my journey to Bali this Spring, after a transformative year, was a delight. 

As I re-enter my world after visiting another one, I remember the story of the famous home-loving Hobbit who travels to an exotic land in search of dragon's treasure. There, and back again.

Now I'm back again, but I am still absorbed in There.  Beautiful Bali, oppressively hot, teeming with tropical life,  and filled with tender people engaging each day in reverent ritual.

Letting go is part of the key to enjoying new experiences, and good travelers know this. You must strike a balance between attachment to your goals (what I call the checklist) and relaxing into whatever is happening. Otherwise you’d spend the afternoon drinking rum down the road from the temple or shopping in markets instead of climbing the volcano.  While either option is good, you do need to choose - inspired by the knowledge that, as in life, your time is limited.

Travel teaches us how to handle curve-balls like tummy aches and bug bites, lost phones, long lines, getting hustled or downright ripped off, or just feeling unsettled and standing out in a crowd like a, well, a tourist.

Here's the secret: it's All Worth It. My treasure, found in a temple complete with a dragon: Sitting on the stone before the altar, breathing incense deeply, flowers behind my ears, hands in prayer pose against my forehead.  

Naturally I would get the smart-ass Hindu priest, who smiled down at me and asked, "American?" and when I nodded yes, he laughed and said, "For you, just make a wish, OK?" 

Sitting alone with this priest and my guide at Besakih, the Mother Temple, praying beneath the volcano on a muggy overcast day, I was at peace with myself for one blessed moment. My spirit woke up, saying to me, "Ahhhhh, This, now this is what you came here for!"

Then the priest poured holy water into my hands to drink (it tasted sweet, like lychee fruit) and daubed my forehead with a pinch of rice. "For prosperity, " he said, and my guide laughed and added, "Now you look Balinese!" 

Riding side-saddle on the back of a scooter, learning to make Banten offerings, and otherwise ever so slightly morphing into the culture through respectful action, words, posture and dress is my favorite part of travel. I admit, I like to "go native" as much as possible, and why not?  

The reverence that the Balinese bring to so many details of life reminds me of what the lady caretaker of a simple 13th century church in Tregaron, Wales, told me: "God is in the little things." This is my belief, too. Whether shooing sheep out of the cemetery or making coconut leaf flower baskets, presence arrives by paying attention.

And now, as my beloved traveling companion told me upon our return, the goal is to "keep the Bali breeze in the belly," despite the fevered rush of our contemporary Western lives. In America, we pretty much find, or invent, our own way. There is no national formula for achieving peace, and fewer common threads of community and ritual. With abandon, we make it all up, and muddle forward with as much graciousness as we can.

Yet, my trip to Bali taught me something vital: the power of reverence. All I need  to do is sit in stillness, hands in prayer, maybe inhale a little sweet incense, and magic happens.

Mt. Batur volcano, with swallow

Blogger at Besakih

Banten offerings

Lotus at Ananda Cottages, Ubud

Here she comes

Last week I arranged narcissus and pale pink gardenias in the Deetjens Inn office. Yesterday, the tights and boots came off and I wore a dress and flat shoes to work. This morning I woke knowing that it was time to place the fuschia silk cloth on my altar.

Yes, after the violent storms of this past Winter, Spring is gently, gently sailing into Big Sur. You can hear it in birds trilling in the trees, see it in daffodils dancing in gentle rains, smell it in cherry blossoms dropping their petals like confetti.

I hear the lupin are out in the back country, filling fields with the scent of sun-warmed grape jelly.

Spring, inexhaustible Spring. We die and we come back to life every year, such a lovely metaphor for our spiritual evolution.

Doing some much-needed Spring cleaning, I came across a postcard with these words of our "local son" author Henry Miller:

"Why then do we not give ourselves -- recklessly, abundantly, completely? If we realized we were part of an endless process, that we had neither to lose nor to gain, but only to live it out, would we behave as we do?"

Ah, Henry Miller, Hindu sage. It's all Lila, God's play. We exist to manifest God in a flow of spontaneous, creative vitality. An end in itself, this cosmic dance is why we are here, and we must join the party or miss out on what our souls need most.

Spring encourages us to give of ourselves, again. To jump back into the world with a shout, "I am here, so let's rejoice!" In a few days, I'm off to Bali, Indonesia, to sing and dance in temples, to ride elephants and pray under volcanoes. It's all part of the adventure of rebirth this Spring.

Partington Island

Everything changes. Nothing is forever. Mountains move, rocks slide, roads collapse. Sometimes, chaos and rubble rule. What we want to believe - that we can count on business as usual - is false. Security is not just around the corner, but change certainly is.  

Maybe this is not so bad.  Risk can generate possibilities. Westerners moan, “this too shall pass” but Buddhists call this impermanence and embracing it makes life sing.  Perhaps it’s possible to find comfort in change, to be nurtured, not wounded, by reality. It is as it is, baby.

The unforeseen and seemingly impossible can free you from illusions and put you on a higher path.

On Partington Ridge this winter though, we’d be happy with a new and improved road. Living in Big Sur means navigating some utterly unique episodes of destruction. The latest one arrived last month, just in time for Christmas.

Our beautiful old road, steadfast for 75 years, the solace of my morning commute, collapsed on December 23, two days after the Mayan Apocalypse.

An enormous weathered rock face, composed of dinosaur-sized boulders (and probably as old) rolled down the cliff in a prodigious rainstorm, destroying a 60’ section of the road. Rocks as large as the pillars at Stonehenge crash-landed on Highway One. It was a Biblical event.

 A triptych of boulders resembling Mt. Rushmore is just a little higher up the road, which raises the question, is there more to come? What I could barely conceive of has become a reasonable expectation. 

The frightening becomes “the new normal” as my neighbors, many no longer spring chickens, hike over the path they’ve carved across the slide.

Personally, I prefer the “back road” because that’s where my baptism into this adventure took place. After changing into rough jeans from tights and sequins on New Year’s Eve, I traveled up the Dubois-DeAngulo dirt road at 2am perched like a hood ornament on my neighbor’s all terrain vehicle. This required a serious grip and a good sense of humor. To paraphrase Bette Davis – talk about a bumpy night!

Thanks to my wonderful employer, Deetjens Inn, we now share a Polaris Ranger 4X4 between three Inn employees and Ridge neighbors on an as needed basis. We can travel down to work each day, and taxi neighbors up and down with groceries and supplies.

  
Partington Island may become a real “eco-resort”, where we pack everything in and out on foot or on 4-wheel drive quad vehicles.  As a friend of mine coined it, we could become “Quadlandia” and remain tranquil in the stillness of Nature.

Everything is somehow smaller and closer as we reach out to our neighbors to arrange rides, share supplies and drink wine together. We solve each problem the lack of road creates step by step, and build consensus over the best course of action for rebuilding it.

Like the shifting rocks above the road, we can’t predict what’s next with perfect accuracy. All of this has deepened my appreciation of survival basics:  is there anything more welcoming than the warmth of a wood fire when you walk indoors on a cold and rainy night? The glow of candlelight while reading beside the fire? Warm clothes, hot food, hugs, and laughter?

It is so very quiet now, delicious, primal quiet. All of us driving cars up and down the road, so necessary in our busy rural lives, has stopped. The relentless drumbeat of modern life slows, and we remember. This is what we came to Big Sur for, after all. We want to feel, as our ancestors did, that we are an essential part of the cosmos, supported by the web of community. 

While we learn to love our neighbors more as we help each other out, we are really a tribe of social hermits here. We treasure the views from our nests, the meditative state of calm that Big Sur brings.  While that deep peace can best be sensed in a solitary way, we are fortunate on Partington Island to share this feeling with like-minded souls.

If there is a creed in Big Sur, it is that this land teaches, heals, and answers prayers. The Esselen, who lived and feasted on this ridge for centuries, leaving hillsides blackened with fire-stones and abalone shells, had a mystical belief: Certain places on Earth transmit all that has happened there. All you have to do is touch them, and you will remember.

The Neap of the Year

Notice how her lips are not moving. 

It's 40 degrees this morning in Big Sur as the sun rises over the ridgetop.  I wear thick cotton stockings under my sweat pants, a cashmere sweater over my thermal shirt, muck-lucks and fingerless gloves. I drink hot water with lemon to warm my insides, which has the added benefit of cleansing my liver from all the holiday cheer. My neighbor, who helped me restore the internet this week (after his horse wandered through the garden and snapped the cable) said, it's the "neap" of the year, approaching the shortest day, the lowest tide of the year.

Extra moisturizer helps offset the effect of the wood-burning stoves. The cats sleep close at night, staying warm. Storm clouds tinted pink on the horizon at dawn take the shapes of centaurs, angels and temples out of a Maxfield Parrish painting. Filling the house with firewood is an ongoing project, and we hike, rake leaves or dance to keep from freezing. 

This is the time of the year which lends itself to the contemplation which comes at the end of a cycle -- when projects draw to a close, lifestyles slow down, dreams fade into the background. We focus on stillness, and birthing what comes next. One thinks of a long winter's nap filled with visions of the year to come. 

So, with Nyepi, the Balinese New Year nationwide day of silence in mind, I decided on an experiment one Sunday  this past month. We live surrounded by words. We steep ourselves in our stories, constantly told and re-told to ourselves and others. Yet we cultivate the art of conversation less than we did before Facebook updates, emails and text messages. These new methods make earlier ways of communicating seem quaint. Why call someone to chat when you can let the world know your status with just a few keystrokes?

Awash in all this communication, our souls are caught in a maze of stimulation and we forget that silence is the starting point for reverence and true understanding. In the words of the Prophet Mohammed, "The first stage of worship is silence." And while reaching out to others for guidance is key, it is as much our vulnerability and willingness to listen that comforts and heals. 

I decided to spend a day in silence.

Abandoning all the gadgets (phone, laptop, ipod) in order to  listen and observe my thoughts. Remembering Blaise Pascal's famous quote, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

Just before dawn, I began my day by wrapping myself in a blanket beside the fire, becoming absorbed in watching a flickering candle flame. The cold weather somehow helps the process of turning inward.  After a few hours of reading and puttering about the house (and making notes of conversations I needed to have very, very soon) one word escapes my lips as I look the white orchid beside the window, "Pretty," I said. 

Later that afternoon, after not answering phone calls (which was hard but kind of a relief, too) or checking emails (OK, I peeked at Facebook), I took a solitary hike, ending up at Partington Cove, where I watched the waves. Surprise, surprise, there's a huge amount of noise in my head, much of it repetitive. Damming the outward flow of talk, I watch the debris of my thoughts, memories and emotions rise to the surface. 

Some treasures float upward, and a few monsters, too. A wedding cake emerges beside a broken teapot. A gem-studded veil swirls around a Christmas tree. Baby goats bleat and scamper over hay bales. A coyote strolls past the bedroom door in the early morning fog.  The wind blows and all is still again, the water smooth.

During this low ebb of the year, when the seas of our souls become a little more tranquil, it's possible to observe the currents that flow like themes through our lives. We can begin to identify the crashing waves from the quiet pools, and perhaps choose more freely how we navigate the tides.

Photos by Linda Sonrisa