Today, especially, I want to be a seagull. A strong southeasterly wind is rising, and all the gulls are out playing on the updrafts. I have watched them for years doing this, and there is no other explanation. They are not hunting or looking for new homes. They are not traveling from one beach to another. They are simply expressing themselves as joyful creatures, grabbing a free thrill ride on the wind. It warms my heart to see wild creatures able to feel such pure joy, to have time to do something beyond meeting their survival needs. They glide and shoot straight up unexpectedly without once flapping their wings. Their only task is navigation and avoiding the ancient douglas firs on the bluff. What I would give to be a gull today!

seagull catches an updraft

To pass the dark month of December with an old friend, here is today’s green meditation, courtesy of Henry Thoreau.

When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them.

To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere.

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