A Monday meander: Loons

Yesterday evening out at the Point.

Anytime loon shows up as a totem, it is calling to you to pay attention to your dreams.  It indicates that they will be of greater importance, along with becoming more vibrant and colorful.  The haunting call of the loon may also be telling you that all those hopes, wishes, and dreams that you have tucked to the back of the heart are about to come to the surface.  The loon may be signalling you not to compromise them again, or you may truly find yourself haunted.

The loon will teach new states of consciousness.  It will also help you to deepen those you have already awakened.  Because it lives close to the water — at the shore line — it can teach you to use these various states of consciousness to open to new dimensions and other life forms…

… To most people, the call of the loon is its most distinguishing feature.  It is haunting and touches the soul in a primal way.  The loon is actually very talkative, and it has a whole repertory of calls — each different in sound and meaning.  One of its calls is similar to the sound of a wolf howl.  One is like a trilling laugh.  It will often use the call to distract predators away from the nest.  To many outdoors people, the loon call is the true call of the wild.  It stirs the primal embers within all who hear it — no matter how long those embers have lain cool.  It is as if the sound is calling forth all that we have ignored or shoved to the back of the closet in our minds.

~ Ted Andrews, Animal Speak

Looking out over the marsh here on the ranch.

About an hour before sunset yesterday, I went for a walk in the woods, and then out to the marsh and the dock.  The light beckoned me.  I love the golden light and the long shadows that accompany autumn.

Reflections drifting on the water.

It was peaceful.  Not quiet or still.  Just peaceful.  There were birds chattering and calling.  A woodpecker was knocking himself out on a tree somewhere in the woods.  The wind was rustling the grasses and the leaves on the trees.  The tide was on the way out, and the water made a kind of shusssshing and lapping sound that you have to listen carefully to hear.

Ripples.

As part of the October Panchakarma (yoga cleanse) course I am following, I’ve finally established a regular meditation practice.  Twice a day, for 20 minutes.  Maybe not always twice a day, but at least once.  And mostly twice.  I am told that meditation is healing and it is the second practice, the evening practice, that does the most cleansing and healing.  I take my evening meditation outside if the weather permits.  Yesterday, the weather not only permitted, it invited.  “Come out,” the weather said, “and sit with the old cedar trees by the marsh.  Don’t rush to get there.  The trees will wait.  Slowly, slowly walk through the woods.  Open up to the sights, the sounds, the scents, and the feel of the place.  Enjoy the light.  Stop to converse with the trees if called to do so.”

Curving ’round.

It is good to sit in the woods, by the marsh, or on the dock, and let the peacefulness settle in for a while.  The inner self begins to still, thoughts drift like cloud reflections on the water.

The small kayak launch that M built.

I stayed about thirty or forty minutes, deepening into the what is (or what was, since it is no more), delighting in the miracle of each moment, the miracle of being there in that moment, the miracle of being.  If you stop, just for a second, and think about how this year and month, this day, this moment in time will only occur once and then it’s gone forever, never to happen again, well… doesn’t that make it seem like something special?

Stopping to look.

The sky teased, hinting at the possibility of a spectacular sunset.  I made my way back towards the house where M must have noticed the same thing because he asked if I’d like to go to the Point.  Of course, of course.  Let’s go.

This is what we saw when we arrived at the Point.

There were several other people out there.  Some were fishing.  Some were playing with a drone, flying it out over the water.  I don’t know how far a drone can go, but I know this one went so far out that we couldn’t see it anymore.  Someone, in a house off in the distance, was practicing on their drum set.  The sound transported me back several years, a decade or more, to when my youngest son would practice and I’d hear the drumming sounds make their way across the water of the pond at Breezy Acres in the Bogs of Ohio.  I used to know, by heart, the drum section of “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath because it was something he played so frequently.  Maybe, if he played it today, I’d still recognize it.

A golden path on the water.

The drums faded, the drone disappeared, and we stood on the shore, watching as the clouds moved in and blocked the sun.  I heard a Bald Eagle singing to the sun as it withdrew behind the clouds.  Then, a surprise.  A Loon cried out.  We don’t hear loons here often.  Only during their migrations.  It was the Loon sound referred to as a tremolo, a wavering sound loons use to announce their presence or to sound an alarm.  That was followed a minute or so later by a wail.  Oh, that sound!  There’s something about it that causes a frisson of excitement, a shiver of the magical and mysterious, a chill of the transcendental.

The Eagle Tree and marsh.

The expected (ha! expectations again!) spectacular, colorful sunset didn’t appear, but the gifts were there in the way the light played on the ripples and waves of the water, the song of the eagle, and the call of the loon.

A change of color.

Thank you for visiting today.  We’re nearing the finish line for Walktober.  Although technically yesterday was the last day, if you haven’t gotten your walk in and posted yet, there is still a little time before I do the round-up post.  I’ll keep an eye out for you and your walk.

Be good, be kind, be loving.  Just Be.  🙂

Blue waves.

A few of the 10,000 reasons to be happy:  906)  The call of the Loon.  I heard it again this morning when I was sitting out on the dock just after sunrise.  907)  Gentle waves coming to shore.  908)  Warm, spiced apple cider.  909)  Surprises.  910)  A windy laundry day.  Everything is drying on the line so quickly that I’ve been able to hang three loads of clean laundry today.

This morning’s moon, nesting inside a fallen leaf. (A double exposure.)