Reflections on the First Week of Summer – Hoodie Yoga 

    Since I retired, I’ve practiced daily, before-breakfast yoga in our loft following Rodney Yee’s DVDs. In front of the wind and water carved rock formations of Arizona’s Glen Canyon on one DVD, Rodney stretches in shorts, a t-shirt, and copious sunshine. On another, Colleen Saidman wears pedal pushers and a tank top on a Hawaiian cliff above the Pacific Ocean. Breezes curled strands of her hair. That’s the real way to practice yoga, I told myself arching for a standing backbend and staring at the massive six by eight inch wood beams overhead.

    On my last visit to see Mom in Florida, I practiced yoga on her screened-in porch. Geckos crawled up the screens, Gulf of Mexico breezes cooled my arms, and a full grown black lab sat beside me. I stretched for downward-facing dog, the pose my husband Spence affectionately calls “butt in the air,” and mentally wrote “outdoor yoga” on my bucket list.

    So when I woke two Sundays ago and my son Charlie sat on the porch listening to the bird chorus and breathing dewy air, I figured it was time for outdoor yoga. But, Charlie, a fresh-air-window-open-year-round kind of guy, wore in his hoodie.

    Probably too cold for me. I climbed to the loft for indoor yoga yet again.

    Afterwards, at breakfast, I told Spence and Charlie, “I’d like to practice yoga outside, but it might be too cold.”

    “Wear a hoodie. You’ll be fine,” they said in unison.

    What could go wrong?

    The next morning, I pulled on my green velor hoodie, unrolled the yoga mat on the deck, and inserted Rodney’s DVD into the laptop. Laying on my back, I stretched my arms wide, pulled my knees into my chest, and lowered them to the right for a belly twist.

    Rodney said, “Inhale.”

    I inhaled the light, sweet, earthy fragrance of the petunias beside me. Overhead clouds opened revealing a quarter moon. Songs of phoebes, robins, mourning doves, chickadees, and song sparrows blended for a robust morning chorus. Tension drained from my muscles.

    Rodney said, “In downward-facing dog, raise your right leg.”

    Yikes, distracted by nature. I hadn’t heard him tell me to belly twist to the left let alone roll over and come into downward-facing dog.

    I switched poses but didn’t chide myself. Being in the moment is a yoga goal.

    As the week progressed, I heeded Rodney’s directions while enjoying ash leaves shimmer, a hummingbird buzz, and a black millipede crawl across my mat. Yoga in nature captivated me.

    Then last Sunday night, a week after I started outdoor yoga, rain fell.

    Damp wouldn’t hurt the yoga mat, made from plastic and rubber. I unrolled the mat on the wet deck and placed a hand towel within reach. Colleen guided me into wide-legged forward bend and said, “Walk your hands out in front of you.”

    I walked my hands forward between two pansy pots, walked them back, then dried them on the towel. No slipping.

    Colleen guided me from plank pose into a side plank variation in which I reached my left foot behind me. It landed in a soothing, cool puddle.

    “Breathe in. Breathe out,” Colleen said with her feet on a dry platform. “Come back to plank position.”

    Balancing on my right hand and right foot, I couldn’t dry my left foot. I swung it to the mat, slipped, and fell like an old-lady. Oops. I wiped the mat and my foot while Colleen continued without me.

    The rest of the week, when water puddled the deck, I practiced yoga under the porch roof. That worked until this Saturday when a two by six foot piece of plywood resting on yellow sawhorses and holding a stack of maple flooring boards (which Spence will use to build Charlie a desktop for his new apartment) occupied my yoga space. I called Spence. He moved the love seat, end table, and folding chair. I swept the cement floor then unrolled my mat. Great. Yoga in a junk room with the view of a wood ceiling.

    But a catbird sang from the tip of the leader on the tallest Fraser fir, and Deer Creek rushed in the valley. Arching my back for camel pose, I followed Rodney’s calming voice. “Let your head release backward. Breathe.”

    I inhaled rain-washed air and gazed beyond the stacked furniture to puffs of clouds drifting across the powder blue sky–still yoga in nature.

    With puddles and nature distractions under control, I only had to manage varying temperatures. Days got sweaty hot this time of year, but mornings in our rural valley could be chilly.

    On that first Monday two weeks ago, the air was 62º F (17º C). Following Spence and Charlie’s advice, I wore a green velor hoodie with matching sweat pants but kept hands and feet bare for solid pose foundations. Mist nestled in trees at the end of the field. Cool air rejuvenated my lungs. Stretching one arm to the floor and the other in the air for triangle pose energized me until my hands cramped–undermining a goal of practicing yoga to minimize arthritis pain.

    When the temperature rose to 66º F (19º C) the next morning, that outfit sufficed. But the temperature dipped back to 63º F (17º C) Wednesday. After pulling on yoga gloves, I placed my right heel by my left hip, put my right leg over my left knee, and held a gloved hand in a finger spread salute for half fish pose. No cramps. No aches. Tweaking the hoodie advice, like wearing a T-shirt and loose linen pants for 72º F (22º C) mornings, managed temperatures.

    No problems . . . until the temperature dipped to 58º F (14º C) this past Tuesday, a deck-puddle day. I moved to the cement porch floor, put a blanket under the yoga mat, pulled on yoga gloves, and hoped for the best. When I lay on my back for constructive rest, cold seeped through the blanket and mat. My back chilled to iceberg temperature, and my bare feet felt as if they’d been packed in snow. Resisting the urge to run into the house to get my fuzzy red slippers, I forced my stiff neck, stiff back, and stiff knees to finish the practice. Calm, but shivering, I gritted my teeth and hobbled inside.

    Spence said, “You looked cute in the yoga poses.”

    “Don’t you mean cold?” I slipped my feet in the fuzzy slippers then twisted an infinity scarf around my neck, turned the heating pad to high for my lower back, and wrapped my legs in a green afghan.

    So when the temperatures dropped to 53º F (12º C), this past Thursday, I bundled–an old pair of non-slip Bair Paws  hospital socks, long underwear, a warm turtleneck, velor sweats and hoodie, and yoga gloves. I also layered two afghans and a yoga blanket under the yoga mat. To a subdued bird chorus and two cats watching through the sliding glass door, I stretched for Warrior II. Hands, neck, back, knees, and toes stayed toasty warm.

    Now I’m hooked. I may never dress like Rodney in shorts or Colleen in a tank top, but yoga in nature entices me out the door every morning. The only question is will I brave yoga in snow.

 

Reflections on the Thirteenth Week of Spring – Hot Air 

    For months, I’d been hoping to get a photo of hot air balloons scattered across an azure sky during Father’s Day weekend. That’s when the Thurston Classic in Meadville schedules four balloon flights–four chances for the photo. In past years, I’d attended events at their launch site, Allegheny College’s Robertson Field. The athletic field is a great place to snap photos of individual balloons but not of the panorama I wanted. I needed a scenic, pull-off-the-highway view.

    Friday I ate an early supper, put on a sun hat, and grabbed my camera bag.

    “You can’t drive if you’re looking for balloons,” Spence said. “I’ll drive. Besides, you’re better at directions.”

    While he drove, I screwed the wide angle lens onto my camera, gazed at the sky, and told him, “Left,” “Right,” “Right,” “Yikes, don’t hit that car,” and “Pull in this parking lot.” We’d reached Allegheny Street, the highest spot on campus. Clutching the camera, I jumped out of the truck and jogged across gravel in the direction of the athletic field a quarter mile away. Power lines made the view unattractive. Even if I climbed to the roof of the truck cab, the view would still be horrible. I trudged back to Spence. “No good.”

    He turned on the engine.“Where to now?”

    “That bridge you suggested?”

    Spence steered through town and turned onto Spring Street bridge.

    “Great view,” I said. “Park on a side street. We can walk back.”

    Sweat soaked my bra.

    We walked up the narrow arching bridge on its cracked concrete sidewalk. Was this a condemned bridge waiting for repairs? Climbing, we crossed fifty feet above French Creek where a biracial couple swam and a small mutt yapped. A bus rumbled past blowing hair into my face and shaking the bridge. My stomach churned. Was a picture worth this? We reached the crest and made our way down to a great scenic view–azure skies and wire free vision in the direction of the athletic field.

    Spence leaned against the waist high concrete wall and gave me his I’m-having-fun smile.

    I gasped. “Please don’t lean on that.” I clutched my stomach with one hand and my forehead with the other. “That’s way too scary.”

    He stood up straight.

    A van passed shaking me and my frayed nerves.

    “I don’t like the bridge swaying,” I said.

    “Better to bend a little than to break,” he said.

    I stared at the crumbling edge of the sidewalk. “How old is this bridge?”

    “About your age,” he said.

    “Great. Decrepit.”

    With feet planted a foot apart for a stable stance, I glanced up and northeast to the balloon free blue sky then down and south to Lucy’s Laundry Basket. A young man rode a bicycle pulling a cart full of stuffed plastic bags and backpacks toward the laundromat. A second young man wore a large backpack and lugged grocery bags.

    “Do you think they’re camping and doing their laundry,” I said.

    Spence waved to the men. “They’re hobos, and that’s all their possessions, not just their laundry.”

    One guarded the bags while the other made two additional trips on foot with his backpack to retrieve more belongings. They stashed it under the roofed sidewalk along the side of the building.

    A stream of vehicles passed from both directions. The bridge swayed, my hair blew, but no balloons appeared.

    Maybe they were flying away from us. “What direction is the wind?”

    “There is no wind.” Spence pointed to the motionless trees. “You’re feeling the breeze from the cars.”

    No wind. Didn’t balloons need wind to fly?

    At 7:15 p.m., an hour and a half after the balloon flight was scheduled to begin, we left our scenic view and followed a mom pushing a two-seat stroller which held a baby boy in diapers and a toddler girl with bows in her blond hair. The mom lifted the girl out of the stroller so she’d get a view of French Creek.

    When we passed them, Spence told the little girl, “It’s pretty. Isn’t it? Be careful.”

    “Why did he tell me ‘careful’?” she said to her mom.

    Be careful indeed. I stood a foot away from the crumbling concrete wall to get a photo of the creek.

    The family passed me taking a photo but stopped so the mom could lift the girl to see a tabby cat resting in the shade of a tree below the bridge. “There’s a cat down there,” she said to us when we passed her again. “Do you see it?”

    “I see it,” I said. “It’s cute.”

    “I told them about the cat,” the girl told her mom.

    Back in the truck, Spence said, “People are more interesting than balloons.”

    Maybe, but I still wanted a panoramic photo of balloons in the sky. I had three more chances.

    Make that two. I didn’t get up early enough to practice yoga, eat breakfast, and drive to Meadville before the 7:00 a.m. start of the Saturday morning event. I didn’t worry. We’d catch the flight that started at 6:30 p.m. 

 

    That evening, Spence and I found a viewing spot in the parking lot of Northwest Community Pharmacy on Route 86. He stayed in the truck playing Blocks on his phone. I walked across the lot to a solid, new concrete sidewalk at the edge of a lawn with white clover and birdsfoot trefoil–no scary fifty foot drop to a creek or laundromat. Standing beside the Live Bait & Tackle machine, I had a clear view of the sky. I relaxed and watched clouds gather.

    Wind whipped the out-of-order sign taped to the coin slot of the bait machine, ruffled my hair, and swayed top branches of tall firs.

    Was it too windy for the race?

    I fetched paper from the truck to jot notes. “How’s your game?”

    Spence stared at his cell phone screen. “I’m in the fourteen thousands, but I’ve been in and out of a lot of trouble.”

    I returned to the bait machine. A red-winged black sang conk-la-reeee. A robin sang cheer-up, cheerily. Clouds covered half the sky. Could the cloud cover prevent the race?

    Tired of standing, I walked to the truck and sat on the bumper.

    Wind flapped the American flag beside the store, tossed maple branches, and rang the wind chimes on the neighbor’s deck. A groundhog scurried across the neighbor’s back yard.

    Spence joined me. ”You’d be more comfortable if I opened the tailgate for you.”

    “Sure,” I said, hopped off the bumper, then resettled on the tailgate beside Spence.

    He stared at his screen of falling blocks.

    I gazed at the sky.

    More clouds.

    Accelerating wind.

    At 7:15, I pulled my cell phone from a pocket and sent a text to our son Charlie at Wells Wood. “Can you check Thurston Classic website to see if race cancelled?”

    In case he’d already fallen asleep, since he leaves for work at 3:00 a.m. on weekdays, I sent a text to our daughter Ellen in Indiana as well. “Waiting for balloons to fly by. Could you check Thurston Classic website to see if they cancelled the race?”

    I swung my legs, enjoyed the cooling wind, and gazed at the cloudy sky.

    Charlie answered first. “It does not say.”

    “Okay. Should be at top. We’ll keep watching.”

    He typed, “Picture of crab and then ‘History of’”

    “Maybe they are still deciding. Getting overcast. What is Meadville weather forecast?”

    He answered, “Rain tomorrow, clear tonight.”

    Clear? While I texted, “Hmmmm. Thanks. Will wait a little longer,” a message came from Ellen.

    “No info. Scheduled thru 8:30 p.”

    “Thanks,” I typed. “Not sure they will fly with so many clouds.”

    “Weather is a-OK from my viewpoint.”

    Thankful for modern communication letting me chat with my short and long distant children, I added, “Enjoy.”

    At 7:45 p.m., Spence’s block game ended with 50,040 points, and I gave up on waiting for the balloons.

    Back home, our not-so-fat-cat George welcomed us at the door, Emma pulled her head out of the toy basket to merrow for food, and Charlie snored in his bedroom. I checked the Thurston Classic website. A note at the top of the page said, “The Thurston Classic Saturday evening flight has been cancelled.”

    I had one more chance for the panoramic balloon picture.

    Sunday, morning I woke at 4:30 a.m. At 5:00 I gave up trying to get back to sleep. Plenty of time to get to the last scheduled balloon flight in Meadville. I put a Father’s Day card by the coffee maker for Spence, swallowed my Fosamax, stamped “Happy Birthday” onto handmade note cards, and practiced rejuvenating yoga under clouds on the windy deck.

    Curious, I checked the Meadville Tribune website for the reason Saturday evening’s flight had been cancelled. The paper didn’t say but reported lack of wind cancelled Friday’s flight. I switched to Thurston Classic’s website and discovered, “The Sunday morning flight of the Thurston Classic has been cancelled. Happy Father’s Day! See you in 2018!”

    Relieved that I wouldn’t be making Spence dash off to Meadville yet again for an hour and a half watch of a balloon free sky on Father’s Day, I wrote “photo of hot air balloons scattered across an azure sky” on my bucket list and June 2018 calendar. Besides, what more adventure did I need this weekend after surviving scary heights, meeting interesting people, texting my children, and having two dates with my husband of forty-nine years?

Reflections on the Twelfth Week of Spring – My Fellas Figured Right

    “Wake up, Janet.” Spence tugged my foot and a handful of covers.

    Emerging from the murky depths of a sound sleep, I struggled to comprehend the tugging from one of my two fellas, my husband Spence. “Huh?” Had I slept through the alarm? Wait. I hadn’t set the alarm.

    “There’s a porcupine on the deck railing.” Spence said. He left.

    Porcupine. Deck. Camera? I sat up and yawned.

    “It’s gone,” Spence called from the great room. “No, it’s not. It’s right outside your window.”

    I threw off the covers. Without wasting time to grab my glasses or camera, I knelt on the bed by the window and pulled back the curtain.

    A fuzzy hair-blob crawled down the gate post at the end of the ramp. When it reached the ground, the blob unfurled giving me a rear end view of the critter. Quills flat and hair fluffed, it looked like a groundhog on a bad hair day but with longer legs. The porcupine waddled across the front yard, crossed the road, and disappeared into the woods.

    Wide awake, I jumped off the bed, dashed to the great room, and peppered Spence with questions to get the beginning of the porcupine tale.

    He chuckled and told me.

    Earlier, while he’d worked on his tablet, he heard “a commotion” on deck.

    George, our no-longer-fat-cat, crouched low to the great room floor, crept to the sliding glass door, and peered up.

    Spence followed George’s gaze to a porcupine.

    The porcupine crept along the deck rail behind the orange black-eyed Susans then stopped to nibble wisteria.

    “I figured you’d be disappointed if I told you about the porcupine later,” he said.

    He got that right. I was glad he woke me at 5:45 a.m. that Tuesday.

    My other fella, son Charlie, didn’t need to wake me.

    Thursday afternoon, after rinsing out my swim gear, I stepped onto the porch carrying a pants hanger with a black pool shoe dangling from each clamp and the handle of my swim bag slung over the hook. Mid reach to the metal frame holding the coconut husk straw of the hanging basket, Charlie tugged my arm.

    “Don’t hang it there. You’re going want to take pictures.”

    He moved the cow bell from the hook beside the front door, took my loaded hanger, and placed it on the freed hook.

    I looked from him to the thin spider plant. “Why would I want a picture of that plant?”

    “Two birds are taking straw from the basket to build a nest.”

    “Taking straw?”

    “I was reading on the love seat and heard a noise behind me. I turned and saw two birds taking straw from the hanging basket. They seemed oblivious to me,” he said.

    My mouth must have dropped because he pointed and said, “You can see the mess they made at the bottom where they pulled.”

    Indeed.

    I fetched my camera, attached the zoom lens, and stood inside the house, four feet from the front door. Within a minute, a phoebe perched on the rim of the hanging basket and pecked at the nesting material.

    I clicked one picture.

    The phoebe turned its head toward me then flew to the tree nursery. Though I checked frequently during the afternoon, the birds didn’t return.

    I didn’t have another winged critter to focus on until Saturday morning when I prepared the bag for George’s subcutaneous fluid treatment.

    Charlie tugged my arm and, without a word, led me to the sliding screen door.

    A silver-spotted skipper butterfly sucked nectar from an orange black-eyed Susan. No need to ask questions.

I tiptoed to fetch my camera then slowly slid the screen door open. Before I stepped outside, the butterfly flitted away.

    I left the camera on and lens cap off. After I gave George his water treatment, I frequently glanced to the deck. Whenever a silver-spotted skipper returned, I grabbed the camera, stepped out the front door, and crept around the porch to the deck. Again and again the skippers flitted away. Finally, one skipper succumbed to purple pansy nectar.

    It sipped.

    I clicked.

    Usually I prefer to surprise my fellas with quirky behaviors like lying on my stomach in the middle of West Creek Road to get the right angle for a photo. But this week, experiencing a porcupine waddle across the front yard, a phoebe collecting straw from the hanging basket, and a silver-spotted skipper sucking nectar, I was glad my fellas figured right.

 

Reflections on the Eleventh Week of Spring – Our Forty-ninth with a Dam Beaver

    The question was how to celebrate our forty-ninth anniversary Thursday. On past anniversaries we walked on Presque Isle beaches, ate dinner and listened to live jazz at Nighttown, or paddled a canoe then a kayak on Lake Wilhelm. We even celebrated our twenty-fifth in England exploring pubs and Jane Austen sites. 

   “We could go to the movie theater in Cochranton,” Spence said.

    A movie? We’d gone to While You Were Sleeping for our anniversary in 1995. In the dark, quiet theater, Spence fell asleep after the opening credits and didn’t wake until I nudged him during the closing credits.

    I said, “Maybe we could do something new.”

    “Like what?”

    I had a wacky idea, but figured he’d go for it. After all, every year since his folks purchased Wells Wood in the 1970s, Spence had combed the banks of Deer Creek looking for beaver gnawed sticks and pointing at slow flow areas saying “If I was a beaver, I’d build my dam there.” This spring he discovered a real dam. He took evening walks to check the beavers’ progress.

    “What about taking folding chairs down to the creek to wait for beavers to appear?” I said. “We could read while we waited.”

    “I’m your guy.”

    Thursday at 7:00 p.m., I grabbed my camera bag, Annette Dashofy’s No Way Home, and remembered, three and a half hours too late, that one of the folding chairs was in the guest room where Charlie slept. “Do you have your book?” I asked Spence.

    He studied the pile of paperbacks on the coffee table. “I won’t take one, but you can take yours.”

    I set my book on the table, said “We’re in this together,” and stepped onto the porch to fold the aluminum chair. I handed it to Spence and picked up a wicker chair.

    “Leave it,” Spence said. “I can sit on the ground.”

    So much for sitting and reading together.

    In silence, as if the beavers could hear us an eighth of a mile away, we tiptoed down the porch steps. I stopped in the field to take the camera from its case, switch it on, and attach the zoom lens.

    Leaves smooshed underfoot on woods paths. Rocks crunched under our feet by the creek.

    Spence set the chair on a swath of rocks six feet downstream from the beaver dam and waved me into the seat.

    I sat and focused the lens on a pile of debris forty feet away. A beaver lodge? Hard to tell with the tree branches and distance obscuring my view.

    Spence stood behind me.

    Water burbled in a feeder stream, chickadees sang “Hey Sweetie,” and traffic rumbled in the distance.

    After five minutes, Spence tapped my shoulder.

    I turned.

    He grinned, waved, then reached for my hand. After a minute, he let go and peered under the brim of his dusty baseball cap at the beaver pond.

    I faced the pond and watched bugs bouncing off the smooth surface. Fragrance of dame’s rocket and damp floated in the air. A song sparrow and blue jays joined the chickadees for the evening chorus.

    Ten more minutes passed. Spence tapped my shoulder a second time.

    I stood and glimpsed movement by the debris pile. Focusing the lens along its curved edge, I squinted. No beaver. I looked back at Spence.

    He shrugged.

    He stood. I sat. We waited while a feeder stream burbled, the bird chorus harmonized, and lawn mowers hummed in the distance.

    Another five minutes passed before Spence tapped my shoulder for the third time.

    A beaver swam across the far end of the pond to the bank. It submerged. Water rippled in its wake. The beaver’s head emerged ten feet from the dam.

    I stood and focused the lens. The camera flashed and clicked.

    The beaver glided closer and closer until it reached the dam. With a stick in its right front foot and mud on its chest, the beaver patted the top of the dam.

    Flash. Click.

    The beaver glared at me.

    Flash Click.

    It raised half its thirty pound bulk out of the water.

    I suppressed a yikes and my unease with the creature’s hidden, sharp teeth just six feet away.

    Flash. Click.

    The beaver swung around, body splashed the water, and slipped away.

    I turned to Spence. He wore a grin that matched mine.

    “That’s the best you’ll get tonight,” he said. “The splash warned other beavers away.”

    Toting our gear, we tramped over rocks then leaves.

    “We’ve never done that for an anniversary,” Spence said.

    Our forty-ninth with a dam beaver was an anniversary to remember.