Recently my friend and I celebrated her birthday with a leisurely visit to the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island, WA. A former estate that’s been put to better use, it’s a 150 acre nature preserve just minutes from the Seattle ferry dock. Even though I live in the boonies with plenty of wild nature all around me, it’s fun to have a change of scene. Plus, it’s a great reminder that even in urban or suburban areas, you can still find places to connect with nature in a deep way.

I hope this photo of a pond in a cedar grove conveys the quality of our experience there. I could have sat meditating on that bench for an hour. We were fortunate to have the place to ourselves, something that would only be possible in the winter. I caught myself from typing “dead of winter”—the reserve was anything but dead.

Witch hazel was in bloom, as well as hellebores and lovely drifts of tiny, hardy cyclamen. The stand out though, was viburnum “blueberry muffin”—isn’t it well-named? That’s a puzzle to me, why there aren’t more plants with blue flowers. Perhaps they are more difficult for pollinators to see against a blue sky. Whatever the reason, it makes me appreciate blue flowers that much more.

MEDITATION EXERCISE

If you need a brief respite in your day, a space of even a few minutes to meditate, to pause and breathe deeply, then click on the photo above to enlarge it. Then lose yourself in the stillness of the grove. Inhale deeply the fresh, damp scent of so many cedars exhaling clean air for you. Feel the gentle dappled light filtering through the boughs. Enjoy the bright reflections of green vitality in the water and listen to the faint chatter of thrushes and sparrows high above you.

Hear the plink of a pine cone dropping into the pond, and stare at the rings moving slowly out from the spot—growing, then dissipating, and then disappearing. Feel your cares do the same—feel your cares dissolve into the clear water, feel them be absorbed by the earth herself. Now look up through the tree tops to fragments of blue sky, bright punctuation in this still grove, points of clarity to hold in your heart.

Take another deep breath…can you feel the sharp tingle of the cedar fragrance, that sense of being ultra aware and alive? What in your life needs that kind of freshness now? To what project or issue can you bring this kind of clear thinking?

I lugged my camera around all afternoon intending to take lots of pictures, but I was so enthralled with the serenity and the quiet winter beauty that I only took these few.

I love it when trees adapt so well to changes in their environment, as this marvelously bent alder did long ago.

I wonder what inspired her to turn sharply left then right? I wanted to sit on her mossy bench, but I didn’t. Whatever tested her desire to grow upward, extreme challenges have tested me in my life, too. I like to think I was able to cope and made good choices about what to do next. How about you?

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What extreme tests have you survived?
• How well did you cope?
• Do you show signs of the tests you’ve faced?
• Are you dealing with a tough challenge now?
• Could you find a more grace-filled way of handling it?

DOWNLOADABLE AFFIRMATION CARD

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See what a cormorant can teach you about meditating here.