Cueillette des champignons

A beautiful video has been going around on Facebook, you might have seen it. It shows in three minutes what happens in a forest over the course of an entire year.

On a background of soothing classical music, pine cones open and release their seeds, snow appears and disappears, to be replaced with snowdrops, May blossoms, summer flowers, wild strawberries, and finally mushrooms... All in three minutes. 

This video made me a bit sad. 

I didn't know why.

This morning in the forest, it came to me that I am reaching for the opposite.

For two months now, every morning, I have gone to the same corner of the same forest. In fact, not just the same corner but the same tree. On the same side. Sometimes I'm there at 9 am, sometimes at noon. Good enough. Every day I sit down in the same spot, with my back leaning against the same fold in the bark, and I sit. 

I don't meditate, I don't pray, I don't do mental yoga. I just sit. I don't try to think, I don't try not to think, I don't watch the birds, I don't try not to watch them. 

I sit. 

To some, this might sound easy, or boring. To me, it's a radical and delicious act.

I sit.

Over the days and the weeks, I am getting to know some of the creatures living in what I already think of as 'my neighbourhood': One obscenely fat curious robin, three tits whose concerts are well worth attending, two woodpeckers who companionably eat from the dead branch of 'my' tree at 9:10 am every morning, two squirrels whose morning exercise routine includes chasing each other up and around  my' tree (and once over my shoulder), and one very (very!) shy wood mouse. 

I would like to say that I see the forest change as the season advances, but I don't. It's all going much much much too slow. Things do look and sound different every day, though. As if I'm there for the first time. Every time. I guess it's hard to synthesise. Or summarise. Or put into three minutes. Or in a blog post.

I'd like to say something wise about it all, but I don't think I have anything wise to say. I just know it's good. What I'm doing. It's good for my soul. And that it takes time. Lots and lots and lots of time. And that for me, right now, taking time for lots and lots and lots of time, to sit in this nothing much that is so rich.... 

... that this creates other oceans of time.

in which to sit some more.