Has someone's turn of phrase, or a glint of clarity in a moment of stillness, or some snippet of prose ever transformed an abstract concept into felt insight for you? Here's one to try on:
For most of us, knowledge of our world comes largely through sight, yet we look about with such unseeing eyes that we are partially blind. One way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, 'What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?'
Biologist Rachel Carlson penned those sentences over six decades ago in Silent Spring, a book which laid a foundation for the modern environmental movement. Her writing called attention to the overuse of an eggshell-weakening pesticide, warning that if regulations and limits weren't put in place we risked waking one day to a "silent spring" with no birdsong.
The notion of experiencing something beautiful with innocent, fresh eyes isn't new, but Carlson's words were a compelling device to personalize the urgency of a needed environmental corrective.
Her words might also be purposed to remobilize our mindfulness for the sake of experiencing the natural world in a more profound way. What might shift for you if, when something comes into your experience, you imagined you might never see or experience it again?
For those who tinker with practices intended to help us squeeze out life's best, most sensual juices through present moment sensing instead of rumination about concepts, Carlson's invitation can offer a way in.
Redirecting attention to the raw sensation of breath is a reliable way to begin. It gives the mind something immediate and sense-based to entrain with other than its obsessive rehashing of a grainy past. A feel-able now-happening alternative to brooding about an imagined future. Finally, the richness of our experience can depend on how willing we are to drop concepts and technique. To open wide to what's revealed to us in real time without rushing to shrink wrap and dissect it.
I'd bet that many of the best prose and poetry writers took some time to let transformative experiences in nature percolate and sink a little deeply into their bones before speed dialing their muse. So maybe if you see something? Don't say anything, at least not right away.
Luscious, Unrushed Sensory Inquiry in Montana
This summer marks the seventh time I'm woven into the team of guides as emcee for the weeklong Feathered Pipe Mindful Unplug retreat in Montana (8-15 July). I can't tell you why you might love going there because I don't know the contours of your cravings. But I can share a bit about why I've kept finding a way, for 19 years and counting, to get myself back to the Feathered Pipe Ranch in the summer time.
I go to hear the low gurgling croak of ravens and aspen leaves tickling each other against the backdrop of an azure blue sky. I go to see what late afternoon light jitterbugging on the lake has to teach me this time. I go to feel my bare feet in a cold stream so I can be coaxed back awake again. I go to smell fragrant and damp lodgepole and ponderosa pines after a summer rain.
And I go for the food. On this point, if you know, you know.
Maybe more than anything, I go because the eclectic community of people who come together there — Ranch guests and the kind and enthusiastic team that ministers to them — are a fun and inspiring bunch to hang around with.
I appreciate, too, that being on 110 acres of wilderness-surrounded land means that when solitude calls, it's easy to answer.
Each year, I see more clearly how important it is to not take places like the Feathered Pipe Ranch for granted. What if I knew that I would never see it again?
The primary teacher at The Mindful Unplug is the place where it happens, the land of the Ranch. Each of the human guides at The Mindful Unplug share what they know and love best. I guide accessible yoga, mindful movement, and meditation. Sensory awareness friend Zane leads forest immersions and an enchanting nightfall meditation. The incomparable Matthew Marsolek and family add a profoundly vibrant dimension to our time together, helping us all find our own rhythms through group drumming, music, and dance.
The retreat is less than two months away and there are a small handful of spots remaining. Remember, this isn't some crowded program with hundreds of participants. Feathered Pipe hosts just one single program at a time and lodging spots limit the size of each retreat. That means that if you join us at The Unplug, you won't find yourself on a busy, buzzing campus among scores of people who are there for another reason. This makes for a spacious intimacy that's rare in world of retreat centers.
Fly to Helena and the Feathered Pipe will pick you up — for free! Soon you'll find yourself in the middle of a Rocky Mountain wonderland. Maybe we can sniff some pines together. Or gaze at some unnoticed beauty in nature as if we'd never seen it before and might never see it again. And if the experience is moving, we don't even have to talk about it right away,
Questions? Just ask me!
