Early morning.

Above the glow of the candle and illuminated table upon which my pen scratches passionately at the invitation of open space on empty journal pages.

Shifting focus. Softening my gaze. Opening up. Looking around.

Seeing beyond safe and assumed. Seeing not what I expect to see but rather what is really there. So much more than quick glances and linear judgments reveal.

I am rewarded with this gift.

Three geese lurking silently through shallow silver water by the rocky shore in the dark of early light before color awakens.

Soften your gaze.

That was something I once read when learning about riding, and an expression I shared often when eventually teaching riding. It was the reminder to stop looking at one point (usually down and directly in front of you). Instead, look around. Try to take in the whole picture. Where are you going? What obstacles lie ahead? What’s lurking in the woods? Who is behind you (or not)?

Soften your gaze.

It’s also the reminder I often need, riding, walking, or just being, to stop clinging tightly to what I expect to see, and open instead to what is really around me.

One of the greatest draws of courage (and thus hardest things to do) is to open. The act of opening wide exposes the soft underbelly of your being. We are hardwired to protect that. We are also hardwired to let down the armor we hammered in place which separates me from you.

Vulnerability.

I’ll show you mine. Not the naughty game we used to play. But the big wide worldly expansive and uncontained game of the wild soul.

This is a courageous act. The act of opening. Of seeing. Really seeing. Understanding what we see.

Peering from behind the lens of a camera safely teaches me to open. I then can take that vulnerability onto the pages via my words.

When we first moved here, I was not able to take photos. I couldn’t find beauty. The land was dry and ragged, burn scarred and overgrown by brambles, broken branches and scattered dreams.  

Now I wish I had my camera with me all the time, like sitting in the garden yesterday afternoon, sipping mate and soaking in the sun, as a hummingbird comes and pokes its needle beak deep into one of the first open vibrant pink blossoms of a peach tree. A peach tree that had yet to be planted in a garden yet to be created less than seven years ago.

Most of my peach trees were started from pits, and many of those pits were saved for ten years by my dear friend John after eating what he said was the best peach ever. As usual, I believed him, for the most part. One of those peach pits turned out to be a nectarine. Okay by me.

This one beginning to blossom at which the hummingbird dances in the air grew from a pit as most of my peach trees did, but not in a place that I wanted it to. It volunteered. I let it go the first year. By the second, I saw it could be a problem. It was growing under my solar panels. So I wrapped my hands around the little trunk and pulled and pulled and pulled but that tree refused to come out. Now it’s a bonsai peach tree. Big fat trunk and the top gets chopped off twice a year which doesn’t stop it from blooming profusely and producing, you know it, the best peaches ever.

On a walk up river with the dogs yesterday, camera strap tugging on my neck, I thought about beauty. Beauty, magic, wonder, awe, call it what you will. That which rewards the effort of opening the heart and soul. That which makes vulnerability worthwhile. The more we dare to look for it, the more of it we will find.

How many times have I been out walking, in the city or in the mountains, and I look up and say, “OMG, how did I get here already?”

It was one of those times. I was lost in rumination. Thinking about what I could have, should have, would have done or said that would have been oh so much better than what I actually did do or say. That sort of thing. Completely useless and closing me off to this magic that’s all around. Ruminating is like a default state. I have to work to drop it. Work to be present. Work to see what is really around me, where I really am. And when I do, I am rewarded. It is a beautiful world.

Wake up, Ginny…

I remind myself to slow down, let things soak, look around. If I’m going too fast I’m missing the view, too busy looking at the rocks I’m trying to avoid stumbling over, not looking ahead or around. If I’m lost in rumination I’m missing all of it in this myopia of tunnel vision. I’m not seeing the rocks or the view.

I stop. Stop worrying about rocks for a moment. And the stupid things I said or did. And for a moment, I lift my head, soften my gaze, and soak in the bigger picture.

Sun splashing on oddly aqua waters. Soft wind through tall dark timber. The shrill whistle of the redwing blackbird.

Beauty. Magic. Wonder. Awe.

There’s also a scattering of tiny bones and orange feathers from a recently killed flicker. A big blow down of an ancient oak tree I sat under only a week ago. Bear scat in the middle of the trail full of fur, and fox dropping left precariously on top of a protruding rock. It’s not all peaches and cream. It’s a package deal. The real deal.

The vulnerability of receiving it all, unfiltered, unadorned. Real and raw and rich and wild.

This is what happens when I soften my gaze.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin