WW: Scrumping season

(Feral apples. Almost always the best-tasting, and absolutely free.
Yet another blessing of life in the outback.)

Practice Models

What I most ached for on the mountain was a musical instrument. They're like languages, each complete and distinct and irreplaceable. Sadly, of the several I play, only the harmonica is easily carried. Which is why I learned it, but as I never acquired the true harpist's seatbelt-sense of "nowhere without it", I'd managed to forget mine before leaving. And I missed it every day.

Flautists have it figured out: a simple tube, and a jackknife with a reamer, and you've got music. Archaeologists believe that, percussion excepted, the transverse flute was the first instrument we invented.

Of course, simplicity on that order demands complexity on another. I tried to learn, once.

And so, the harmonica. Because anything your instrument won't do for you, you have to find in yourself.

(Photo of 43,000-year-old Aurignacian bone flute, which clearly demanded more talent than I have, courtesy of José-Manuel Benito, Parque de la Prehistoria de Teverga, and Wikimedia Commons. Photo of my old Hohner Chromonica model also courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Junco

(Junco hyemalis)

Holy Hogwash

I have Christian friends who revel in the notion that God attends to them personally, that they are important. But true peace lies in the opposite. For then your sadness is nothing. Your hopes, fears, disappointments, and ambitions, all made of the same hogwash. Creation stretches on and on, tangible and timeless, and you...

Well, there is no you, is there?

Perhaps you died laughing.


(Adapted from 100 Days on the Mountain, copyright RK Henderson. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Troy and Rusty Lilly.)

WW: Meditating mantis

(Encountered this large lady [Mantis religiosa], about 3 inches long, in the road a few days ago. I almost ran over her on my bike; she looked like a leaf, until she skittered away.

We don't have mantises here. Which leaves two possibilities:

1. She's a doomed relic of organic pest control. As I've never seen an adult here, I've always assumed that purchased egg cases either don't hatch or the hatchlings spread to the four winds and are lost. However, there is a large garden nearby.

2. This is yet another indicator [along with this and this and this and this] that we've pushed the weather cycle into freefall.

Note abdomen full of eggs.)

Street Level Zen: Suchness

"There’s no such thing as a cliché maple tree. You don’t walk by one and say, 'Oh God, there’s another maple tree!'"

Nelson Bentley


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Monk robe

(Why is it so satisfying to see it neatly folded for the road, like this? I'll actually come up with excuses to meditate in something else, just so I don't have to unfold it. See it in action here.)