Downy Woodpecker

 

We planted wildflowers on our walk to school today and then after I dropped Ruby off, I went down to the lake and planted some wildflowers by the lake: Cosmos, Crimson Clover, Blue Lupine, Baby Snapdragon, Lemon Mint, Purple Coneflower (Echinacea), and Perennials. I turned on my BirdNET app, and got something else besides a red wing blackbird, I got a Downy Woodpecker. I didn't see it. I meditated for 10 minutes, but it's not good with my shoes on and it's too muddy and wet for me to take off my shoes. 

Sept 20th

The weaker trees and branches are beginning to turn color. 

I saw by the lake for a nature meditation. Maybe just sitting with my eyes open to look at the lake. You can see the branches a fisherman put in to hold his rods. Henry wasn't there. Looked like it would be too difficult to get past all the stuff.

There weren't birds on the lake. I wondered about fall migration. My friend in Portland went to watch Vaux Swifts go down a chimney as a planned stop on their migration, passing through. 

"We’ve been watching the Vaux Swifts most nights roost in a chimney at a high school a few blocks away. They are tiny birds which are in the process of migration from Canada down to Venezuela and hit Portland annually throughout the month of September. This year there have been fewer than most years for reasons unclear. Some years there have been up to 35,000 in a single evening all trying to roost for the night in the chimney. This year the numbers have so far maxed out at 5,430 for a single night. Hundreds of people show up each night at sunset with blankets and bottles of wine to watch and there is usually a fair amount of drama as Cooper’s Hawks hang out on the chimney ledge and nab the first Swifts that try to slip by. 

It’s pretty cool watching the massive swarm of birds that all fly in unison making really interesting patterns in the sky before deciding all at one to funnel into the chimney reminiscent of iwater going down a drain. Being stoned enhances the spectacle in my experience. The birds would normally roost in hollowed out trees, and the chimney apparently seems like an acceptable substitute. 

One year a long time ago the school custodian turned on the boiler by mistake and there was a massive tragedy. The school then decommissioned the chimney and installed a whole separate heating system so that the incident would never happen again. The school mascot is of course the Swift."

Good friends share nature experiences with you. 

I skipped a meditation online with friends in Iran to take my daughter to school this morning. They stopped by to drop something off and I hopped in the car to join in the short journey a few blocks, then walked down to the lake. 

I get nervous a critter will come up to me, there are racoons who seemed kind of ill who lurk around sometimes, and there are hobos who live under the bridge, but most likely is the Filipino fisherman. Haven't seen him in a while because I haven't been down there much lately. There's also a birder who walks around with his binoculars and guide. I've run into park rangers a few times and students doing some nature project. There was supposed to be construction of a run off pipe, but I don't see evidence of that anymore. 

I saw a posting that at 10 on Sunday they'll form a group to pick up the garbage. There are two spots where a garbage bag has broken and people just left it. Most likely the hobos or the people who go down there to smoke. Now that it's legal, I smell it in my apartment on the second floor quite often, but honestly when it was illegal, I smelled is just about as much. My upstairs neighbor his retired and smokes a lot. He has advanced stage COPD, so he doesn't smoke as much these days. 

Say what you want about the narcissism of blogging but I thought I had to get active and get down to the lake to update the blog. 

Ticks

There was a College student dragging some cloth across the ground. I asked her what she was doing and she said she was seeing if there were any ticks. She hadn’t found any. I asked her what she studied. She said she said environmental science. I said it be cool if I could go back in time and pick that. She said it’s not too late. I said sometimes it’s harder to change vectors later in life. I used to be a therapist who would tell people that in their 40's and 50's and 60's. They never believed me.

I meditated in the rain for 10 minutes. The one tortoise meditation.

Walking out I found two more students. I asked them if they found some texts and they said two

The survey guys were out again and I asked him about the drainage pipe they were making. The guy was kind of annoyed, I'd asked him before, but I wasn't clear on it. Yeah so you’re doing a drainage pipe right but I was trying to get some more information like what’s that gonna look like, a drainage pipe anyway? He says it’s going to go from E. Park Dr. to the Grand Central. I have asked where is the water going to dump out into? He didn’t seem to know.

I ran into the young lady again and asked her if she found any more ticks. She said no. I asked her if she understood what the pipe would be doing, where it what would that be, what it what would the impact be on the park? She didn’t seem to know.

Survey folk

Today there are new flowers out and there are some petals on the path. every days you could say like Heraclitus you can step in the same river twice, you can’t walk down the same path twice.

I don’t think I’m being paranoid by thinking the birds make special chirps when I first arrive, but when I sit down next to the lake, they go back to their regular noise style.

One tortoise stuck his head up during my 10 minute meditation.

Survey folk we’re going in when I left. A guy says they’re putting a drain in.

Today I start my year of Thoreau.

Transcendentalism

 

My meditation view.

Transcendentalism was trying to shuck off restrictive Puritanical thinking gone off the rails. Too much clamping down leads to weirdness. As the beats extended the movement to hedonistic absurdity, it took a turn back into Buddhism. Not fusty Buddhism but the freedom loving Buddhism.