Fairfax Journey

a different stillness

Posted on November 28, 2013 by Tom Childers

I’ve been on a little retreat this week, traveling through many kinds of desert with Jen. Death Valley, Nevada, western and southern Arizona, the Sonoran desert, and now southern California. This pic was on our walk near my sister’s home near Tucson, two days after some significant rain. The crackled dried mud in the wash bed is a deep memory from my childhood, fun to crunch under feet, leaving footprints that last for days or months until the next rain.

These deserts all have a stillness to them that I feel viscerally. It’s not the silence, although there is a lot of that. It’s not the overbearing sun or bone-dryness, as the weather has been mild, and there is some moisture this week. It’s not because desert is dead…each place we visit has a surprising amount of life; we’ve been watching roadrunners, lizards, dove, quail, ravens and hummingbirds all day today. We’ve seen and heard coyotes five times, nearly hitting one trotting across the road in Nevada. Yet the overall experience is like a prolonged meditation, where systems inside me grind to a halt, and I notice my thought processes more easily. What is that?

It seems like a more subtle thing, something larger than ourselves, caused by primordial forces at work. The air is so clean and crisp and dry, each breath feels like something is getting cleansed. Geologically, the basin-and-range country has the thinnest crust on the surface of the earth, so the heat and force of molten rock are less than twenty miles beneath our feet, even though we cannot directly feel it. Every plant seems to grow slowly and deliberately, securing a toehold in a hostile environment. We saw a barrel cactus that had been blown over within the last few days, nearly four feet tall, more than 50 years old. And we’ve been surrounded by saguaro in fantastic formations, each a hundred or two hundred years in the making. Some scientists think the oldest living beings on the surface of the earth are creosote bush, seen all over the desert, which spread by roots and may be a single connected organism all over southwestern Arizona.

Perhaps it’s just the size of the space. Desert is big, I’ve been looking at mountains twenty to fifty miles away for days. Walking out into the middle of the Sonoran desert is akin to seeing myself from space, “an invisible dot, on an invisible dot”, as Douglas Adams said. I think the amazing part is how precious each plant can feel, in the midst of miles of open space. Sitting in the stillness, each living thing seems unique, including myself. How unexpected, that I feel myself more profoundly in the largest of spaces.

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weapon reflection

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Tom Childers

One of the oddest conundrums in my life is my history with firearms. As a buddhist, I have vowed to not take life, and as a result, I have little use for rifles and shotguns. Yet I was a competitive target shooter through high school and college, spending one or two hours per day refining my skill. I still benefit from the honed concentration that I developed.

I have inherited a handful of rifles and shotguns over the last fifteen years, and each one has a story. All are at least 40 years old, some more than a hundred, It will take a while to find proper homes for them. This rifle, perhaps sixty years old, has me musing, and it’s on a journey that started today when I pulled it out of storage.

My father was in the Army from 1954 until 1958. the year when I was born. He served at Fort Knox (the US gold repository), and in Germany as part of the occupation forces. I have dozens of letters that he exchanged with my mother during that period, speaking of poker games, guard duty, training on artillery, the strangeness of being in new places and distant lands. So was particularly interesting to pull this rifle out of storage today.

It’s a Springfield infantry rifle, 30-06 caliber, a weapon issued to infantry in the Korean war. It’s accurate, powerful, and heavy — a bolt-action, slow firing weapon more suited to open fields and long distances than the closer fighting and dense vegetation of Korea. It literally weighs more than twice what a current Army infantry weapon weighs. In fact, the ammunition does too. I have no idea how my father obtained it. Did he just steal it and bring it home when he was discharged? Did the Army care? All I know is that it’s in good shape, it fires a heavy-caliber cartridge that is common, and it probably kicks like a mule.

This thing was a beast to lug around. It must be twelve pounds. I imagine it was his rifle throughout his service, that he learned to disassemble and clean it, and did so on dozens of occasions. I imagine he carted it, with pounds of ammunition — and a state-of-the-art 1955 field pack — on training exercises. It’s nothing special, there is no star on the receiver suggesting that it’s a match-grade, especially accurate weapon. It’s simply an infantry rifle, in good condition, well cared for, and I’ve oiled it and treated the leather, and kept it in storage since 1998 when he passed away. I’ve never fired it.

Now I’m packing for a road trip back to Arizona, where I grew up, and one of the things I’m bringing is this rifle. My sister lives outside of Tucson, well out in the Sonoran desert, and I’m going on a road trip with Jen tomorrow morning to spent a week in the desert, relaxing. Tucson is our furthest destination, and I’m so looking forward to our visit. My sister occasionally has use for a weapon, surrounded by miles of open desert and critters, and she is a competent and measured soul, so it seems only right to bring it along and bestow it upon her.

This is part of a the diaspora, the cleaning out of my home, the releasing of artifacts from my father, my stepfathers, Nancy, and my mother. I’ve become the custodian of stuff from three families, three generations, and several lineages. I’ve dealt with a lot of it, but there is still more. Springfield, I release you.

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miss powassan

Posted on October 5, 2013 by Tom Childers

I’ve been continuing to think about boats over the last few weeks, and it’s going to be a few years before I can seriously consider purchasing a big enough boat to live aboard. Many of you don’t know that I owned a 44’ wooden schooner for about 15 years (a classic boat nightmare, by the way!) and that boats have always been an interest. Even fewer of you know that I already own a boat. Yes, this is her, Miss Powassan, a 17’ Giesler cedar-planked runabout.

The story is kind of amusing. Nancy’s family has had cabins on a lake in Ontario, Canada for about 80 years. She and I first went to her dad’s cabin in 2005, and it was an annual vacation most of our years together. After hearing her desire for a wood canoe, I contacted Giesler and ordered one for her, gave her the order as a Christmas present, then we went to the town of Powassan on our first trip in 2006 to pick the canoe up. There in the show room, covered in a quarter-inch of wood dust, was Miss Powassan. They had built her especially for the town’s centennial in 2004, with full decking, reinforcement for an oversized motor, and a commemorative brass plaque on the dash. She had appeared in parades, escorted dignitaries, etc. Nancy fell in love, we actually needed a boat, so of course we had to buy her. Miss Powassan is a classic and simple boat, with bench seating and cushions for four, quick, light and economical.

She has been the star of our trips, pulling water skiers, getting groceries (the cabin is only accessible by boat), ferrying guest and taking us on full-day journeys from lake to lake to lake, touring the country in search of the perfect picnic spot. This picture was taken on just such a day, when we took a lunch and traveled a couple of hours to this inn, where you can see Nancy sitting at our picnic table. I realize that I want Miss Powassan in my life, it’s been more than three years since I’ve been to Canada and put her in the water. Now the itch for a boat is reminding me that she sits in forlorn storage, untended, and I only need to fetch her.

Ah, therein lies the rub. 2835 miles, 42 hours of driving time. A journey is forming in my mind, a pilgrimage to Port Loring, Canada next summer, in my trusty Ford pickup. I’ll get the kayaks, canoe, fishing gear, and Miss Powassan of course. I also will scatter Nancy’s ashes in the lake near her family cabin, a place she deeply loved, a duty that has been awaiting me for almost two years. There is a world of closure that this trip will offer, as well as a chance to visit good friends and perhaps even family. I’ve had some amazingly wonderful times there, with some very fine and fun people. With both Nancy and her father gone, the connection is slipping away, and there are many there who will want to honor Nancy’s passing.

Then of course, I have to figure out where I’m going to keep all these boats. One of my friends who lives aboard a big boat in Sausalito has already volunteered dock space. Hmm.

Posted in Nancy, Reflection, Travel | 1 Comment

the tibetan voice

Posted on September 4, 2013 by Tom Childers

It’s so good to know our internal voices. Today, I have had several conversations with my closest friends about impulses to make radical changes in our lives. Have you ever had that moment, when you feel like you have to change everything? That has apparently resurfaced in me today. I thought about buying a tugboat.

Hear me out, there is an important background. Shortly after Nancy passed away, through a mysterious Quora connection, I met a man in Texas who lost his wife a couple of years before me. Jonas reached out, and we talked for several hours about his experience, and about where I was. He said (and I paraphrase), “you will have this voice, the ‘tibetan voice’, that will tell you to sell everything you own, and move to Tibet. Do not listen to this voice, but sit in the tension of your new life.”

Awesome advice, and sure enough, it happened several times within the first few months. Now I’m heading towards 2 years in December, and my life feels very different. Alive and juicy, professionally engaged, loving time with Jenifer and my friends, with everything pretty stable. I don’t need to make a sudden or deep change to relieve the unbearable feeling of loss and change, do I?

Yet it’s incredibly fun to let this voice out, sitting with Jenifer and brainstorming wildly alternative lifestyles. Could we create a place where we had flexibility and creativity, fulfillment and solid income, all at once? Such a great question. Where would I like to live someday, where would I most like to travel, how would I like to spend more of my time? Spend a few months touring the US in our Westy? Move to a cottage near the Russian River? What about Arizona, Oregon, a farm in the Sierra foothills, or some place with a vineyard? The big island of Hawaii? Run a buddhist retreat center?

I noodle around on Craigslist, using it as a gateway to possibility. How much are small houses in Sonoma county? What would a large sailboat or house boat in Sausalito cost? And here she is, I manage to find a large and extremely inefficient boat up in Puget Sound, a 110-foot ex-Army tugboat, that would take many thousands of dollars in fuel just to move down to San Francisco. But so cool. People live on these boats, and there might be a way to make a living with a private tugboat. Emergency services, odd jobs moving stuff around the bay, who knows? My ability to fantasize seems to have no bounds.

The harder question is, “why”? Why is this urge appearing now? I love my relationship, my home, my job. There seems to be no reason for the tibetan voice to appear…

Ah. The seventh anniversary of my wedding is coming up in a few days. More unfelt grief. Of course. But still, the voice is so delightful. I need to let it out more, if just to enjoy my dreams.

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total use

Posted on July 27, 2013 by Tom Childers

I’ve been seriously busy for the last month. I started a new job four weeks ago, and it’s requiring every bit of my skill, knowledge and experience. It’s exciting. The last time I did this, I built a house. That project demanded all of my drive and project management, decisiveness and heart. Now, I’m doing something professionally that requires all my knowledge, sensitivity, fearlessness, and humor.

Four weeks ago, I became the lead software architect for a company that is in the middle of a turnaround. There are a lot of assets, products with solid customer bases and capability. However, growth has been flat for several years, while competitors are flourishing in an expanding market. Most of upper management has been changed in the last seven months. We are now doing something remarkable and fun to bring all this capability to a new type of customer, using state-of-the-art web technologies.

The personal challenges are daunting. I haven’t coded in Java in years, there are entrenched ways of looking at things in this company that need to change, and I’m a little out of date on what can be done with the latest open source software products and frameworks. Plus I’m a new guy, I’ve only had a few weeks to meet dozens of new people, assess their capabilities, assess the massive store of technologies and products we are working with.

But I’ve done this before. I have a pretty good understanding of the customers and what they do with our products, what kind of capabilities they need. I’m good at seeing and communicating the overall picture, and this company is full of talented, intelligent and resourceful people who want to do the right thing, want to make it happen. There is a very cool idea here, and it’s happening.

I’m experiencing a feeling that is distantly familiar. It’s like the last few months of house building, when it’s all coming together. It’s like after a run or a bike ride or yoga, where my body feels fully alive, and my mind is clear. This is what we do, as engineers. Software starts to do something new, we see data moving in new and different ways, user interfaces look better and better. Everything is juicy, there is an undercurrent of excitement. As the pieces of the architecture become clearer, and as issues get resolved, my co-workers and I are getting glimpses of what we are creating, how it may fulfill needs in ways we cannot imagine.

Today, we demonstrated our first functioning software. We’re smiling at each other, going home on a Friday afternoon feeling excited at our progress. Indeed we should. I’ve only been here five weeks, and my team of seven engineers are beginning to pull in the same direction to deliver something that our customers will love. Hard to beat the feeling of accomplishment.

I’m well-used indeed. Such a great feeling, to bring it all.

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the documentary project

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Tom Childers

My daily practices are really a set of “skillful means”. They are so effective, it’s startling, and addictive in the best of ways. Have you ever meditated or done yoga or gone running for several days in a row, developed a deep sense of well-being, then stopped and felt a kind of crash within a couple of days? I’m experiencing that when I miss a day, and that’s what I mean by “addictive”. I’m chanting the Vajrasattva Mantra each morning right now, and I swear, traffic lights are green more often, other drivers are courteous, and positive and helpful things just seem to happen spontaneously. When I miss it, I feel vaguely grumpy, and everything in my life just seems more difficult. There is magic here. I’m an MIT-trained guy, I believe in physics, and I don’t understand it. But I’m happy to say, publicly, this is a Really Good Thing for me.

So…I’m a part of a remarkable project, a documentary film on Vajrayana buddhism. The film will be called “Turning Inward”, and it will take six years to make. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the guy in the foreground, in the striped shirt. This is a photo taken during one of our classes, and you can see part of the main altar on the right, some of the thangkas of deities and enlightened beings hanging on the walls…and the range of folks I study with. There are people here in their twenties, in their nineties, new members, folks who have been practicing for decades. I’m relatively new to this, only studying for a few years.

If you click on the photo, you will be taken to a 15-minute video, the first part of the project. The main website is TurningInwardMovie, where you can see a three-minute trailer, a video of Lama Palden, and other commentary. This project needs funding, and the team is looking for donors who can contribute $1000 or more towards the total cost. If you can afford it, please consider supporting this. I truly believe that this film will help others find their own path, and will spread concepts and teachings that can help the world. Did you ever wonder why His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, is so revered? This film will help you understand the profound gift that Tibetans are offering, the spiritual technology that they have refined over many centuries. I don’t see this as a religion so much; it’s more of a viewpoint, a way of looking at ourselves and each other and our world that really serves us all.

This short film was shot last December, when we were only three months into our studies. I just saw it for the first time a month ago, and it’s rather startling to see myself as others see me, to hear my voice as others hear me. I live a rather ascetic existence, alone in my wonderful house with my needy and affectionate cat. The film offers me a window into the lives of the other folks I’m practicing with…we meet for our teachings and our retreats, and see each other in the sangha, but really don’t know what each other’s lives are like. I practice with people that collect fresh eggs each morning, garden and play with their kids each day, sing frequently, live in very different and wonderful places. I feel a lot of pleasure as I contemplate the marvelous and mysterious collective that we are.

There is a deeper part that the film brings through. The interviews were powerful, and I said some things, talked about the practice, in ways that inspire me. I had forgotten what I’d said, and it is a rare thing for any of us to see ourselves in a profound place, and feel impacted. It is quite stunning for me to just watch, hear what I had to say, and take it in as though coming from an actor on the screen. It’s great for me to know that I can be inspiring. I would like to do more of that.

Coleen, Michelle, Don…I am so impressed by your story-telling skill. You force me to see what I’m doing in a different, bigger way. Thank you for doing this.

Posted in Buddhism | 1 Comment

inner light

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Tom Childers

So much has been going on inside over the last month, it’s hard to articulate. I tried to start writing earlier tonight, and couldn’t find the words, so I did an unconscious thing, and watched one of my favorite Star Trek – The Next Generation episodes, “The Inner Light”. This one always brings me to tears, and now I understand a lot more about why. Yes, there is loss, and I can completely relate to it. But I’m also projecting my feelings on the story of incarnation.

In this episode, Picard gets to experience a whole different incarnation, an entire life. It’s like a microcosm of our existence, a deep reminder that our life is transient, and that some part of us is bigger than this lifetime. Picard goes on a twenty-minute journey where he loves a woman, has children, lets go of the past life that he knew, loses his wife, finds a fulfilling existence, then finally returns to the larger, outer life. He also learns to play the flute, and the skill carries with him as he returns to his place as the captain of a starship. Symbolically, this is the cycle of samsara, of incarnation over and over. Roger Ebert wrote about this very well.

This is still a very current topic in my awareness. I’m swimming in an ongoing pool of Nancy’s stuff, sorting and distributing, and she continues to unfold. It’s a strange process; she is becoming more intimate, and also less of a force. I feel less of the drama of our life and her death, instead of a wave of grief, I feel a burst of sadness and thoughtfulness, smiling at the memory and returning to what is here and now…it’s all settling in. I have a fresh truckload of her stuff from under her father’s house, some of it is still boxed and sealed, and it’s not difficult, any more, just time-consuming. But I do have a bunch of photos that I’ve never seen, and they’ve been touching my heart. Her high school prom, watching sunrise from a temple in Indonesia (from around the time we first met, doing workshops together), touching images from her twenties and thirties and her childhood.

I get to see the totality of her incarnation now, through pictures, journals, artwork, interior design plans for huge beautiful projects. It’s a lot, she was a prolific woman. And along with the intimacy of seeing and feeling so much of her, she is also settling into my heart in a different way. She’s just there, like a treasured experience, but no longer dominating my feelings.

Her altar has changed. I’ve removed her ashes from the great room of my home, and created a new place for her inside the altar cabinet in my practice room. Now when I go down there each morning, and light a candle, I can open the cabinet and see her new sacred area, the photos and some of her favorite things, an altar within an altar. It seems so appropriate, as my buddhist practice would never have grown like this if I hadn’t lost her. And it also seems perfect that she is held within the Buddha, just as she is held within my heart, and her spirit is held within something greater now.

My life with her is now so much like the journey of Picard in this program. It’s like a whole reality that brought me new experience and learning. And both the memory and the learning stay with me, like Picard and his ability to play the flute.

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ejection and injection of consciousness

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Tom Childers

Roger Ebert passed away this morning, a man who has illuminated my life for decades. I grew up with “Siskel and Ebert At The Movies”, and now they are both gone. Fine men, at least, what I know of them. Perhaps the most lovely part of this loss is how gracefully Roger did it. On Tuesday, he wrote a final post on his blog, where he spoke of “taking a leave of presence”. How prophetic, he must have known. Read it, the final line is such an adorable exit, if you ever saw his TV program.

But even more interesting, Ebert wrote about life and death quite eloquently in one of his books,

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

How beautiful, to be in this place. I strive for it, and yet Roger was here well before his passing. Of course, I’m healthy and he was not – there’s nothing like impending death to bring our days into sharp focus – he must have felt his life ending, and he certainly had a pile of projects going! I’m learning how to acknowledge my impermanence, and also my permanence, many times every single day.

It just so happens that I’m learning “The Root Text of the Seven Points of Training of the Mind”, thanks to Lama Palden. This training is pretty much a life-long road map for becoming more conscious, compassionate and enlightened. I love this study, and am slowly adapting the many parts of it into my awareness. There are two little parts that I want to share, part of Point Four, “The Utilization of Practice In One’s Whole Life”.

In life, practice the five strengths.
The Mahayana instructions for the ejection of consciousness at Death is the five strengths: how you conduct yourself is important.

Of course, this is why we have lamas, so that we can understand what these brief instructions mean. One of the strengths is ‘repudiation’. My notes say this about repudiation in life:

Let go of ego-clinging. We are not the most important thing in the universe. Samsara (suffering) is a state of mind. Feel how tired we are of suffering, and our desire for awakening.

And in death:

Repudiation of our body and body sensations, release the relative ground of the body to find the ultimate ground. We let go of identifying with the body, and the body sensations. We step back a bit from the ground that our body has provided, so that we can find the ultimate ground, the awareness and peace and love our practices have prepared us for. Recognize that no one has died, no one was born. Let go that anyone is dying.

It sounds so simple, but of course, none of this is easy, or familiar. That’s why we call it ‘practice’. In vajrayana, reincarnation isn’t just an idea or concept, it is the basis for all of our actions and thought, what we say, what we do, how we think. To fully believe in reincarnation, I have to start to look at my life the way that Roger did. This life is ultimately like a trip to France, a set of memories and experiences that I will carry forward after my body is gone.

So I’m contemplating the ejection of consciousness at death, in order to inject more consciousness into my life. Thank you, Roger, for the gift of all you shared with us. You inspire me.

Posted in Buddhism, Reflection | 1 Comment

mz. parker

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Tom Childers

I’m embarking on a new adventure, acquiring a vehicle that I’ve fantasized about for decades. A VW Westfalia camper. This has deep psychological implications, and I am indeed smiling away as I write about this. I have always loved the idea of having one, being able to take off on short notice to camp somewhere, anywhere really, without reservations or arrangements or permits. Something appeals deeply about being self-contained in a tidy mobile package.

In typical fashion, this has been a research project, which started a month ago. It all began when Jen and I got tickets to Burning Man this year, tickets which I may not be able to use because of a schedule conflict. However, we immediately started talking about how we could go there, how we would camp, and I mentioned my long-term love of Westfalias. It turns out to be a shared love, and we were off. I, being the geek that I am, immediately turned to the internet, and quickly flushed the two major sites for afficionados of the breed. There is a subculture of “westy” fans (born in the ’60’s), and just a few shops and websites that specialize in them. In case you don’t know, Westy’s have built in storage, sink, stove and refrigerator, with propane and water tanks, external power connectors, and a rear seat that folds down into a respectable bed. The top has a skylight, and pops up to create an upper sleeping area for two more people.

(If you want to share the geekyness, check out theSamba.com, GoWesty.com, and the BusLab in Berkeley, CA)

There are good years and not-so-good years for the Vanagon, upgrades available for engines, headlights, instruments, wheels, storage, electrical power, solar power, air conditioning…the list is endless, born of the passion that these people have embodied ever since the first 36-horsepower anemic air-cooled VW bus brought flower children across the country. We settled on a 1985-1991 Vanagon Westy, because it has good ground clearance, some personality (the newer Eurovans look like delivery vehicles) and functioning heating, refrigerator, and air conditioning. We both want one with a manual transmission, AC, a recent engine rebuild, and preferably white in color.

I found nice vans in Albuquerque, NM, Ketchem, ID, British Colombia, Dallas, TX, Half Moon Bay, CA, northern Washington, Georgia, right next door in Novato, and finally, the girl you see in the photo, who lives in Vancouver, WA. “Mz. Parker” has had a heart transplant, what is called a “Tiico conversion”, which installs a VW Jetta 4-cylinder motor instead of the somewhat flakey water-cooled boxer motor. Tiico is now defunct, but their work lives on, boosting power, reliability, durability and the mileage significantly. Her motor has 24K miles, her transmission was rebuilt 12K miles ago, there are upgrades to instruments, lighting, air conditioning and wheels. Plus she was repainted about 8 years ago, and is white with tinted windows. Plus a Yakima rack on top.

The CarFax report on her is interesting. She was titled in Indiana in 1988, then apparently ran into a train in Florida (!) a few months later. Obviously there wasn’t significant damage, as she has a clean title, but you’ve got to wonder what the story is behind that event. She came to Washington in 2003 with 150K miles on the odometer, changed owners in 2008, and is now about to land in our laps with 192K on the clock.

So we are off on an adventure, flying to Portland Saturday morning with sleeping bags, some tools, and a change of clothes. The plan is to visit my stepmom in Vancouver, and make it home by Sunday evening. I am excited and happy, both about the van and the adventure itself.

On a deeper level, this means a major change is happening in my vehicle collection. I will be selling Roy, my trusty Ford F150 work truck, for which I have been very grateful as he helped us build our house, then helped me move Nancy’s stuff out into the world. I also expect to sell Britt, my British Racing Green Mini Cooper. This will leave me with a BMW car, two BMW motorcycles, and Mz. Parker, all nice German technology, right where my heart is. I am, after all, an Engineer.

Posted in Geek | 2 Comments

the back 40

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Tom Childers

With a burst of nice weather, after rain earlier in the week, I have a responsibility. It’s even a savage pleasure. I get to rip thousands of scotch broom plants out of my back yard. You can see the results. Piles of dead broom in the foreground, a clear view of the forest to the right, and an ocean of the pernicious weeds to the left. I’ve cleared about half of the yard this winter.

There is data, and then there is feeling. The data is…this is a big fire hazard, and as you can see, it’s hard to see the forest for the, uh, weeds. The right side is lovely, the left side annoying. When Nancy and I bought this property, this weed field was 8 feet high, and we couldn’t see the trees at all until we fought our way through. We pulled them, thousands of them. And then, I neglected to come back and pull them again. My mistake. The good news is, they are not hard to yank after a rain, and we got a good bit earlier this week. So it’s prime time to strike. The problem will be less and less each year, if I am diligent.

The feeling is edgy. Grrr, I cheerfully kill hundreds and thousands of these, pulling them with gloves and sometimes with tools. When I’m in the flow, it’s a meditative experience, totally focused and present, feeling my body work and feeling the resistance of these plants as they grip the earth so firmly. I now sit in my kitchen, feeling a deep satisfaction after pushing the edge back another ten feet. So much of the learning in my life happens when I can hold several things in my awareness at the same time. Today, it’s “savage satisfaction”, “meditative destruction”, my vow to not kill, and the beautiful esthetic and health of an open forest.

Here is the view from above, the upper roof deck of my home, with covered outdoor furniture, and the wild oak forest above. All of the scotch broom on the right side will be gone by May, that is my solemn commitment.

There are precious discoveries as I meditatively destruct the weeds. I found baby oaks and bays, precious trees coming up with only a few leaves. With the scotch broom gone, they will get sun, and with a little assistance from me — perhaps a strategic watering if we have no rain for a month — they will help the forest continue. And the forest needs help: I’ve lost two oaks to Sudden Oak Death since buying this property, and my neighbor’s beautiful heritage oak tree on the south side of my house also succumbed. I’m the steward of a bit of Marin, a half-acre of hillside, with foxes and turkeys and all the usual varmints. I want to keep it healthy.