I think it’s hard to be present, because I have been taught all my life that the point of life, the purpose of it, is to progress. There’s always some achievement or some better future off in the distance.

Yet what I’ve learned is that the present is where life occurs. It doesn’t happen in the future, and it isn’t a goal. It’s actually happening right now as you read this.

I decided to record some words about this. Feel free to listen—it was recorded totally off the cuff, with no planning, on the edge of a huge beaver pond near where I live in Vermont.

Wellbeing is a net.

And we are a strand in the net. The strands around us are made of people, places, what we consume, produce, see, feel, experience.

I think of this in the fading evening. The leaves and hills have changed slowly this season. The tops of mountains have snow. Distant hills disappear in morning mist. To the south the valley is hidden by mountains. The air cold in the morning, the grass gold or brown, the trees bare, the geese moving and honking. The water of the river reflects the clouds, turning silver. The pebbles darken with morning dew.

Most evenings I go running. During the day I study sleep, neuroscience, nutrition, plants—just to pass the time. I write and organize. Life is but people and places and things, and what you do. Wellbeing is a net.

I notice that experience compounds as my life goes on, but my gathering basket has holes. Most times are forgotten, those that matter stay. What matters is not always good. What matters is what impacts, changes: for better, or worse.

I wandered Elko, Nevada between work days, talked with a friend, and we both agreed it might be impossible to even understand one thing fully, in one life. And so many regressions.

The great task is to be here for it. To not run, to accept, compress, and take care, pay attention, and receive instruction from what occurs.

The good and bad, the things that matter. To forgive and realize: the wounds others carry make up part of their net, one of their many strands. And isn't it amazing that individual neurons can live over a hundred years? Maintaining, connecting, remodeling, constantly in connection with others around them, or they die. The sense of ourselves is encoded, somehow, in the form and waves of activity that science has revealed are less based in parts of the brain, but the interconnectedness of them all—and the neurons themselves are nets with strands: axons, dendrites, synapses. Yet there's a difference between knowing and feeling. And physiology doesn't explain everything. And we have known this intuitively for thousands of years. Yet as there is more powerful ways to study, the "truth" eludes. There is still, and always will be, mystery

Wellbeing is a net. We are a strand. There is no separation between ourselves and wellbeing. The things that come together, or move apart, are part of us. They produce thoughts and feelings that become us. This is what it means to be a strand in the net.

The geese and trees know this. Or better, they feel, or produce it. There are human cultures in my dreams that greet each other by saying:

"I am you, But,I am myself too"

I wish I could throw a rope around certain feelings that would never fade. But wellbeing, and life, are a net, and the strands are manifold, moving, changing, uncovering, disappearing—never staying the same. That's the beauty of it.

Thoughts come and go, come and go with the currents of the mind.

I wrote this once. Then I wrote again. I write my present and my future, and I write my past. It is written into me, my thoughts, feelings, my "amygdala", my "neurons", my strands, and what is beyond—my friends and relationships. The future depends on how I feel, and what I have, or what I choose to do even now. To think, to be, stay or change, are for me to know. But I am also you.

And we are: together,little gossamer strands.Glowing in the sunlight.Growing and changing, severing, or explaining. Rippling in the wind.

Wellbeing is a net And we a strand

Thoughts about being present and ignoring obstacles—to focus instead on what you can do. Credits to the young hawthorne tree that has taken root on a hillside where I boil tea.

There is a little piano against one wall of this house I live in. I play it from time to time. When I first began, I noticed all the melodies I played were sad. I knew I had some sadness in me. Actually, I knew I had a lot. But, I didn’t really know what to do with it. So I played the piano most days, but the songs were always pretty sad.

For one reason or another, I have been carrying some sadness based on grief for a few years. It has been hard but not without its lessons. I think that sadness can teach us about what others feel. So I’ve learned that. But there is a point when the lesson has been learned, yet the sadness still hangs around.

And then about a week ago I was looking at the field below the house where I live. In the sky a few hawks circled. A group of renegade chickens, who escaped months ago from a coop and went wild, took notice of the hawks and fled under the porch—their shelter.

And just before that, I had stood up from the table. But this was different than the hundreds of times I had stood up from a table recently, because for years I have been dealing with knee pain—but at this moment, there was none. Yet, I noticed my muscles tighten, as if trying to protect myself from pain that was no longer there.

I stood watching the chickens cower, and thinking about pain. About how mental pain becomes physical, and physical pain becomes mental—about how pain works its way into us, and hangs around.

It’s not that I haven’t done my best to grieve, or get rid of pain. I have really tried. But I failed. Yet in this moment, noticing the lack of pain, I felt the way my body still held itself tense around pain that wasn’t there. I thought about the chickens hiding from the death of the hawks. I thought about what it is to protect oneself. And I thought about vulnerability, and how opening is needed to allow healing. I knew all this, and have practiced it too. Yet somehow in feeling my body respond automatically to pain that was no longer there, I saw a different way forward.

Later that week, I listened to Wilson Wewa, a Northern Pauite elder, tell the story of the grieving woman and the sage grouse.

Long ago, before there were people, there was a woman. She was crying, crying, crying endlessly because her husband had died. She was utterly and completely overwhelmed with grief. Her people did not understand her grief, and they did not know what to do. So she grieved alone. She was carrying so much pain. And so she went out into the desert all by herself.

While she was out there alone, she heard a noise. She walked to the top of a rise and looked down. There, down below her in the sage was a group of sage hens. And they were dancing. They were in a big circle, and they were having a good time. And at the end of their song, they would open up their wings and let out a big joyful whoop.

One of the sage hens noticed the woman crying. So she came up to her. And she said to the woman that she should not grieve uncontrollably. And the sage hen said that our grief is not good for us when it makes us sick. The sage hens then taught her a song that she sang. And she found comfort in the song.

When she came back to her village, she brought the song and the dance, and she taught the people.

I listened to this story, turned it over and over in my mind. And the words came to mind: Pain is a Practice.

It is a practice because it’s something that we have, whether we want it or not. A practice is something you have to work on. So the practice of pain is a choice. Though this practice is not a comfortable one.

As I wrote the poem Pain as a Practice, something left me. And something came in, too. But I don’t know if this pain I carried for a long time is gone forever, in my knee, or in my mind.

But, I do know one thing: the grief has passed. It has stopped making me sick. And I hope that going forward, I can play other songs on the piano, and write other words than the ones that are sad.

Pain as a Practice

When I stand up from the table, I shift slightlyto allow my weight to land on my right leginstead of the left.Twisting under weightseems to bother the left knee.

When I write I try to make the wordscome out in long sentences and paragraphs, again.But I cannot.Pain has modified my ability to write stories.Each sentence written has to hold what it needs— like me, in each moment.

I can’t always tellwhat is good for me.So I use pain as a practice— because it shows what hurts. It’s important to keep up the practice, of painto not let it slip awayinto numbness.Because, I’ve learned, the pain will still be there.

I am getting in good shape this spring because I am planning to walk five hundred miles, or morestringing together a rough route on CalTopoon Shoshone, Bannock, Crow, and Blackfeet land.

And so, just recently, I noticed my left instep is weaker than my right which causes my knee to sway slightly inward. My suspicion is that this most subtle instabilityis behind a nebulous knee pain I’ve had for years.

And so I practice: little exercisesto strengthen my footand suddenly, the pain is gone!But,my body remembers.It has been sensitive to that pain for years.Yet now that it’s goneit still won’t let it go.The pain might come back at any time, my body thinks, and Ithink, because I am also my body— I think, without thinking: I must stay safe from pain.

Yet, this protective notion protects the trauma, not me.This is not the painful practice that will be a freedom from pain.This practice of protecting the painmight create an imbalance that brings it back again.And so I have to let it go.

I heard a Pauite elder saythat endless grief can make us sickand even hurt those who love us.We have to learn to be human beings again, he said.“We are small. And we don’t know everything.Nature can teach us things.”

Caught in my mind,I forget I have a bodythat can work out the inside problems by itself. By a simple moving through the world.

What it takes, is this subtle noticing a mind of care, for my own wants and needs.A hand to the wind—A vision through the drainageof down trees, and bogsto get to that far ridgewhere the walk doesn’t end, but, beginsat next days first light.

Then Again,and again, and again, and again….

A story about following a coyote’s tracks in fresh snow. And, in turn, thinking about my own life. Full text below.

Piano and story by me, Hudson Gardner. Tracks by coyote and deer. Snow by earth.

…

At the base of the hill, past the muddy shopyard and cattle fences, across the bridge that planks over Chimacum creek, and just before the salmonberry groves, were two perfect prints in the fresh snow.

Light snow filled in the almond shaped grooves, with the gradually tapering tips softened by fresh flakes that fell overnight.

The tracks were staggered, by just a few inches, almost one atop another. About an inch long, they went nearly through to the dark ground. They were the tracks of a young black tailed deer.

We followed them, leading away from the road, down a path through a low boggy area where gravel had been spread in late summer. Halfway through the bog, the tracks met a coyotes—coming the opposite direction. Though the coyotes were fresh: not hours, maybe not even minutes ago had his-her warm breathing body passed this spot. So we followed the tracks, one going forward, one backward, and read the animals stories.

Late in the night the deer had been walking north. Early this morning, the coyote was headed south. At one point, the deer tracks split and headed west, into a thick cedar bog. The coyotes backtracks continued clearly up the hill.

The coyote showed a habit of winding around, following their nose. A shuffling around spot in the snow revealed a hole down to bare grass, where the coyote had ambushed a rodent in their track.

Further up the hill the coyote had deviated from the main line of path, heading into a field. Another hole, another rodent crunched. That brought the count to at least two rodents for breakfast, probably in the space of less than five minutes.

Around an alder copse the tracks went, then to a little rise in the ground. And then they stopped.

There was a little circle of melted snow and ice, where they coyote had, at some point late last night, curled up to sleep. And beyond that little circle, a path of older tracks led away into the distance, marking where he-she had come from.

Standing, looking at this little place of rest, the choice made no sense. It was open on all sides, with no tree cover. But the longer I looked, the more I realized how perfect of a place it was. The grass all around was flattened, giving good sight lines in all directions. By barely lifting his-her head, the coyote could see hundreds of yards in all directions. Yet, due to their location on the small rise, they couldn't be seen until they either heard someone approaching, or saw them. It may have been the most protected place, as far as sight lines and escape routes, in a square mile of hills, forest, and bog.

From the little melted circle of rest, the coyote's tracks led into the distance, toward a farm house and a few hills. Beyond there, I knew that a lake lay, and somewhat remote young forests interspersed with clearcuts. The coyote may have come all the way from up there, or he-she may spend a lot of time in this field, hunting the plentiful voles and mice. I would never have known this story, but for the rare snow that told it to me.

Following this track in the snow got me thinking about my own story. I set out a while ago to write in a way that was like a river: vital, ever moving, multi branched, yet still knowable. Formed, and form-ing, ever changing, never staying the same, yet having some sense to it. I wanted to write like that. And in learning to write that way my life itself has inevitably taken course changes.

Life always seems hazy to me, a constant process of testing. And yet there are these crystalline moments, where it seems like everything has led somewhere that it all makes sense, like how a river always has a source. Yet just as that feeling is grasped, the solidity and good feelings tend to dissolve again.

I wonder if there are more trails I can follow, larger than my own knowing. To be supported by, yet not be exploited by. Such things make me think of my best times. I think of when I have felt understood, or made something worth understanding. And like I told someone recently, these crystalline moments seem like little guide posts I have hammered into the ground as I've gone. And from some perfect place of rest, on a low hill, it may be possible to look back at them. And then to wake up, and keep on going.

...

That was backtracking, and I hope you enjoyed it.

You may notice in this episode that I avoided using the word "it" when referring to the deer and coyote. That is because the word "it" often refers to something inanimate, something without consciousness. I don't believe animals lack consciousness, I believe they feel things just as we do—have memories, stories, and lives—so I prefer to use the word "he-she" when I don't know their gender, or "they" instead of "it". Just something to think about.

I love you. Take care

— Hudson

In this episode, I share a poem I wrote, and a little about my writing difficulties and successes over the last year or two.

I really like this poem, and think it is one of my best. So I hope you find something in it too.

Music Credits: Liberty Bell by Darkside.

Calligraphy of a Stream

I

Credits:

Piano by Hudson Gardner, Fire cracklings by fire, Wind by Earth

Untitled

Trackless trackless mountain cloudwhat do I ask to be?To be you, to be you.

Coming—going into nothingwhat do I ask to see?To see you, to see you.

Trackless trackless mountain pathwhere do I ask to go?To find you, to find you.

Trackless trackless meadow of flowersWhat do I ask of you?To believe you.To believe you.

Does it ever feel, to you, like you are doing what you were made to do? I wonder if everyone has some feeling like that, at some point in their life. It comes in and out, like static on radio, for me.

I think the idealized life is often said to be “in balance”—work-life balance, family balance, relationship balance, or balancing your checkbook (just kidding). Maybe a life that feels aligned is one of balance? Yet, for me, those moments where I feel properly “in the flow” aren’t continuous. Which leaves me wanting them when they are gone, which, in a way, creates imbalance.

I read recently that the idea of balance in the natural world is actually misguided. The natural world is a chaotic series of successions. A forest burns and fireweed sprouts. Aspens, their roots underground and safe from fire, send up shoots in every direction, eventually shading out the fireweed and almost anything else. In fifty to a hundred years the aspens grow huge and die and fall, just in time for the seedlings of fir and pine and hemlock, which grew from seeds brought there and cached by birds and mammals, to rocket skyward.

The idea of balance, this unattainable thing (if we’re being honest), is applied to human lives, since it exists in nature, right? What if it doesn’t exist in nature, what then? Maybe our lives are actually not meant to be balanced, and the attempt to seek some perfect balance is impossible. It makes us chase that “in the flow” feeling, which sets up life to be a series of ups and downs. Life is and always was and always will be a series of unpredictable events. There is no perpetual balance within uncertainty. Maybe life is more like an infinite act of rebalancing, or, you could say, flowing.

And yet nature functions well, and we do too. Nature has us beat in that it does not worry about balance. It just expresses, in all its mystery, the breath of life. And I feel myself, myself, what I am made to do, if I am honest, is to do the same.

Yesterday Anna and I drove the truck up the mountain to a creekside trail we found a year ago. We went down it together, amazed at the colors and motion of butterflies that seemed to spontaneously appear in the sunlight. The aspen trunks were white and snow lay in crevices along the path. We wound down to the river and walked along it for a while, then found a meadow. I set up my tent, just for fun, and used a small camp axe to buck some wood for whoever would have a fire there next. Anna laid in the sun, or watched the river flow by.

Over Anna’s chest and down the left side of her body hung a massive, thick braid. I picked up the end of it. “Remember biking the road up to Big Bear?” I asked. “Yeah, I was just looking at photos from then”, she said, “and three years ago we did that ride. After we got back I went up to Washington and stayed with Brit and Sam and then went to my mom’s house and cut off all my hair.” “Three years of growth,” I said pulling lightly at her thick braid.

To realize three years had passed since then felt funny and sad at the same time. Because, mostly, this flow of experiences we name Life doesn’t always flow easily or clearly. The pain of the turns can be acute. And yet, they all flow together somewhere, and get bunched up in memory, and then you can sit on a rock in the spring sun in the mountains and think about all the times when things weren’t so good, and the times also when they were good, and then come back to the time right now—which is really all the time we have. And it’s strange to think of, that there is a physical representation of all that time that hangs beautiful and thick from Anna’s head—of a thousand thousand strands braided together—of three years of growth.

Thanks for tuning in to this edition of Grass Journal, titled: Coming Into Contact With Ourselves.

In this episode I discuss wilderness with Beau Vandendolder. He is a doctor of Classical Chinese Medicine, licensed acupuncturist, and Alexander Technique practitioner. He is also a dear friend, though I have seen him only sporadically over the five years we have known each other. He and I have one of those rare connections that seems to not rely on having to see each other that much. I've only had a handful of friendships in my life like this one, and so I am really glad to have him on the podcast to talk about his view of wilderness, medicine, and getting off the trail of life.

Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Beautiful intro music by Anna Pallotta, cover of Regina Spektor

Dear anyone,

I hope the world isn't hurting you too much these days. What have you been up to? Today the sun came in through the clouds and the south facing windows. It made me remember how important it is to notice things like that. For a span of time, to have just a few thoughts of my own.

But, I know you have felt a lot of that lately. Being alone has been the theme lately. As I looked at the lonely looking clouds I listened to some music this morning. And that reminded me of how great it is to share a feeling with someone else. To be able to talk and to share things.

—

The sun was bright as I trespassed through the grassy field filled full of broken down cars at a turn in the gravel road. Through the fragrant woods I walked, to a trail flagged by hanging plastic tape. Up into the ferns and alder slopes, then along and above a draw into the darkness of a spruce wood. Out into the sunlight again on the flat of a ridge I went. Then down a gravel logging road, looking into the trimmed firs on both sides for a way through the ferns and stacked thinning piles. I struggled through the head high brush for a time and then saw a few boulders seated amidst a low natural spring, where deer, squirrels, and birds come to drink. In the distance a pileated woodpecker seesawed his way up a tree trunk, and in the distance were bright maple leaves signalling a direction to walk in. Following my eyes, to where looked best, I came to a two-stemmed cedar near a little marsh. I cleared some brush off the uneven ground. I sat down and gathered a few twigs. I started a fire in a folding wood stove to make doug fir tea.

As the tea simmered I used a small axe to notch a rotting alder so as to mark, from a distance, this space I had found by the brightness of fresh cut wood. I gathered handfuls of alder twigs to stoke the small fire. I fed the fire and smelled the smoke of the alder, and the spicy smoke of a few cedar twigs.

After the fire burned down I sipped tea, and watched the light fade in the West, through the tree trunks. Far below a car or two passed. Not too far aside from where I sat a gravel road ran where people would sometimes walk their dogs. But no person ever came back to where I was.

In this space, not silent, not far away, I came to contemplate. Indeed, to think on certain things.

I have heard of such a place—kept in mind, or in physical space. A place of refuge. Yet the tendrils of certain things still creep in. The sound of a car below, a plane above, of someone walking their dog—calls me back to a moment out the window with a small chickadee, eating seed. A truck blasted by on the road above, which made the chickadee flee, to the grape vines above the ground.

As the world shrinks smaller, the footprint of our sounds grow larger. And where is the wilderness left to be seen, burned by fires, trees, no leaves, salvage logged and steel cabled, to the cry of more people who need jobs to live on.

And it all sinks into me, in this quiet place under these young trees. A deep breath, then another, as the light fades further and the leaves open their own stomata to breathe. And I breathe too. And so we together breathe.

“We practice in order to cultivate a sense of agency. To understand that a range of responses are open to us. We practice to remember to breathe.To have space in the midst of adversity.To remember our values,and to seewhat we really care about.We practice to find support in our inner strength,and in one another.”

— Sharon Salzberg

Dear subscribers,

You can find my podcast on all major platforms now. Also, every episode will also be sent out on this newsletter. Here are some links:

Spotify • iTunes • ListenNotes • Google • TuneIn

Last week, I sat down at my birch table and recorded this episode more or less on accident in the bright late October sun.

Things discussed

* Community

* How spiders move in the fall

* Rent

* Rootedness

* Paying attention to beauty