Custom Mindfulness Plan - Chase

This really made me think about what mindfulness actually is.  Using our definition of anything that I give my attention to fully, I realized that I have several practices that I rely on regularly.  One of the most important for me is working with plants.  I have a borderline-OCD relationship with my houseplants and the trees and shrubs outside my house.  I love spacing out and walking around the outside of my small urban house, checking on the growth of each of the shrubs and trees that I have planted.  In the winter I plan out the things that I want to plant as soon as the ground thaws and dream about what my garden will look like in ten years when all of the plants have grown large.  I imagine a miniature jungle with many small spaces where people can relax underneath vines teeming with swollen fruit and trees aflush with flowers.  Dreaming....yes....distracted.....no.

Planking was the sport in those days......great athletes of the day could plank for hours at a time with only 2 ribs making contact with the corner of a stone wall; hours without falling.  Margo and Marcus actually met at a plank-in.  She was well known around Plattsburg for her incline planks, where she could balance on a corner with her head 2 feet lower than her feet.  People would even come over from Burlington to watch her and bring her laurels made of cedar boughs.  Cedar was a tree of the old world and only a few survived.  Marcus had never seen anyone so beautiful.  He became obsessed.  He could plank too, but he knew he would never have moves like her.  When he finally got the nerve up to tell her that he hadn't stopped thinking of her at least once an hour for the past year, at least twice, no, twenty times every hour, no words came out of his mouth.  Does she think I'm crazy?  Why can't she just know?  She knows.  Why can't she just come tell me that she knows!

Magic Scones

Nobody knew what it was like to have webbed feet!  I was caught in the space in between proud and embarrassed, in between considering myself a powerful mutant and a timid freak.  I did use my webbed feet to my advantage in all of my apocalypse dreams, swimming across Lake Champlain pulling a raft of friends and supplies, finding safety in the mountains of New York.  But, being real, I was too embarrassed to join my high school swim team, so I just passive-agressively made fun of them to make myself feel better.  It was only for finding my love of baking that I was saved.  Baking, you say!  What high-schooler gets into baking?  I was also obsessed with growing shrubs.  What kinds of shrubs you ask?  Shrubs with berries of all types!  Currants, elderberries, blueberries, and more.  Of course, I filled my baked goods with the berries, and more.  It was just a hobby for several years until I noticed  and unususal increase in the number of friends that were stopping by to sample and even take home some of my baked goods.  I allowed myself to be flattered for a while, but eventually the attention became more that I could attribute to chance.  Why was everybody so crazy about the choke cherries that I was suing?  Was there something unique about my blueberries?  Why did i often find people laying on their backs and giggling in my back yard after eating my berries.  Could there be a amgic nutrient in the soil that feeds my plants?  Could my plants have pants?

Snake Mountain

Striped maple....notice the wide leaves.

The view from the summit!!!

Rock Point!!

     Wednesday, September 25th brought us to Rock Point to do our initial tree ID session......the lake was low as you can see in this picture that Kat St. Andrews took.  Look at the lines on the rocks....the water level from earlier times, likely this spring.  We investigated the differences between sugar and silver maples, pines and hemlocks, and simple and compound leaves.

Getting to know Centennial.....Day 2:

On a classic, gray early fall day we made our second visit to Centennial Woods, getting to know a little bit more about it's history, topography, and ecology.....

Wildflower soon to be identified! 

Ready for exploration! 

Goldenrod lets us know that fall in New England is on the way!

Centennial isn't as safe you think!!

Black Cherry's flaky bark!!

 Fungi!!

Brandon with a toad in each hand! 

 From old life comes new life!

Eastern Hemlock

Not much light on the forest floor

Eastern White Pine

Haley, Evie, and Scott

Aurora!

When we walked into the woods on the hot early September afternoon, we passed through a field of leaning yellow goldenrod that smelled of the ripeness of hay.  A patch of grasses lay flattened, a bed for some deer perhaps?  The sound of insects visiting flowers as efficiently as possible surrounded us and I ran my hands over the soft clusters of golden flowers that were at shoulder height on either side of the path.  As we entered the woods we left the light behind.  I felt my feet sink into the soft earth on the banks of centennial brook.  The scent of the pine grove reminded me what part of the country I was in, and the silence of the woods was broken only by the snapping of twigs underneath our feet.  Centennial!