Close encounters at the confluence

I stayed home with a head-cold today, and took some more time to write, so here's another installment about the retreat I just came back from.

Last year at this same time, Don and I also went to the fall retreat with Tara Brach at Pearlstone. That was my first time at that conference center (though not my first time on retreat with Tara). When I hiked the woods loop for the first time, I got lost. As I eventually learned, the trail is only well-marked in one direction, and if you take it in the other direction, you are quite apt to take a wrong turn, and end up on a side spur of the loop trail. When this happened to me unawares last year, I ended up on a trail that dead-ends at the confluence of two streams.

While I sort of recognized the beauty and power of the spot, I also was scared and confused, and tried 2 or 3 times to retrace my steps and figure out what I’d done wrong. I even considered bushwhacking in the direction I believed the correct trail to be, but was scared of getting completely lost. I was tired, thirsty, hungry for the lunch I was missing, and didn’t have a cell phone, and had, as usual, a very strong aversion to going all the way back the way I’d come, rather than finding the rest of the loop. It wasn’t until I gave up on my deep resistance to that, that I went far enough back to actually find the turn-off I’d missed.

At the time, I was working on the balance between will and surrender; on being present with what is, rather than trying to force things to go according to my own map or plan, and learning how to open up to “help” from spirit or God or deep inner wisdom. It wasn’t until after I got back to the lodge and (eventually) recovered my equilibrium that I realized I’d completely failed to do so – I'd tried to be present, and noticed a few leaves falling, but mostly spent the time feeling like I was supposed to know what I was doing following a trail and a map; cursing myself for not bringing a cell phone; cursing the camp for not marking the trail better; wishing someone would come along and rescue me; but not, actually, letting go into any sort of faith. Afterwards I also, eventually, was able to laugh about this, and realized that in a certain way, maybe that whole experience was a sort of “help” – a pointing out of my attachment to following my plan and figuring it out on my own.

A couple of days later, I decided to go back to the dead-end I’d encountered accidentally – the confluence. Moving water has always been a deep teacher for me, and I went there and sat for a while on a hollow log overlooking one of the streams just above where it joins the other. After I’d been sitting a while, listening to crows making loud noises, I suddenly saw a fox. It came up the far bank of the joined part of the stream, then crossed it in front of me and went up the far bank of the stream that I was sitting next to. Though it moved quickly, I was able to watch it more clearly than any other sighting I’ve had of a fox. This was the second time in a month or two that I’d seen a fox – with the first one being at my home in Madison – and those two sightings were the ONLY times I’ve ever been sure I saw a fox. From my days of being a practicing neo-Pagan, and my lifetime of loving the natural world, I couldn’t help but feel it might be a sign. I think at the time I decided it was probably a call to keener awareness and observation. Seems, in hindsight, like I may have benefitted from practicing that kind of awareness this year – finding the breast lump comes immediately to mind!

This year, I was eager to go back once again to the confluence. I actually made the trek there (about 1.5 miles one way) on my first full day there, and sat on the same log for a while. I was not expecting to see a fox again, but was curious what I would see. There were some fish hanging out in an eddy right under the log, and I watched them for a while. I noticed I was feeling quite uneasy. There were a lot of noises coming from the woods all around me – the walnuts and hickories were dropping (or perhaps being hurled by squirrels), and close to the water the sound of the stream made it hard to discern the different noises. I was also aware of what I’d realized after the fox sighting, that the hollow log was clearly a raccoon perch, with scat on either side of me, and possibly itself a raccoon den. I wondered whether the raccoons would come out and object to my presence. I was working on befriending my fear, though, so I stayed there for a bit.

All of a sudden, I heard a clear rustling right behind me, and quickly turned my head. I found the movement and watched the small creature as it scurried up onto the log and ran down the length of it and bumped right into my leg! I gasped, it stopped – a very small, dark grey mouse, with very bright black eyes and whiskers spread in a huge fan, as big or bigger than its whole body! We looked at one another for a moment, then it scurried down behind me, and back up onto the log on the other side of me, and sniffed around, like an ant trying to find a scent trail. Then it scurried up a tree in front of me that was growing out over the water, and into a hole about 10 feet up it!

I sat catching my breath, feeling astonished – that I’d had another wildlife encounter in this same place that I’d seen a fox last year, and a very close, strange encounter at that! And once again I wondered what it might mean. Mice are considered timid in our culture – but it hadn’t seemed particularly scared of me – startled, for sure, when it ran nose-first into my leg clad in bright robins-egg blue pants, but not particularly scared, since it just went around me and hurried on its way.

The next day I had my one-to-one interview with one of the teachers, and by luck or design was assigned to Tara. She remembered me from previous years, and had read my interview prep form where I talked about my cancer. I told her I was working on befriending my fear. She asked me what happens when I try to do so. I told her I seem to have feelings related to my fear of death, but it was hard to directly feel my fear of death. She asked me to tell her about the related feelings, and I did – mainly a sort of anticipatory grief, about not wanting to lose the people and things I love.

“It sounds like it’s about how much you love life,” she said, and invited me to feel that. I did – and in her deeply supportive presence, I began to feel like I was fairly vibrating with it. She said, “Let that be your refuge.” I noticed too the ways I seemed to “tamp it down,” and we talked about those – my fear that I might burn too brightly and either burn out, or upset others. She asked what my intuition told me about how to be with the fears. I talked about gentleness with myself, and vulnerability, and told her the story about the mouse. How, though it was vulnerable, it did not seem particularly scared. I realized as I talked to her that the mouse, with its outsized whiskers, seemed very alive. That, even though it ran nose-first into something big and unexpected (“like you have done with the cancer,” Tara pointed out), it found its way around. She said to practice taking refuge in my love of life, in my own aliveness. “And,” she said, “don’t wait! Begin practicing it while at the retreat.” We joked about how I might be the first ever to get kicked out of the dharma hall for shining too brightly.