Please note that this is a work in progress. The running title for my manuscript is Finding Satori Within Nature. There are currently 14 chapters being edited.
Thank you for your collective interest.
The Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) at sunrise.
The Water Journal: Part One
Stickney Pool, and all the wetlands of my hometown, are where the Trumpeter Swans are in the Springtime. This is where my story shall start my friends. Numerous writing spots lay hidden, waiting to be discovered miles within the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge in Zimmerman, Minnesota, USA. One can take a 30,600-acre journey back to the Wisconsin Glacial Age 14,000 years ago. There were mammoths who laid down to sleep just beyond the marsh over there in the grasslands. This ecosystem is where the early Springtime dew helps let the stress flow away.
A wetland community lives and flourishes in front of where I scribble this sentence. Hours and hours and HOURS have been spent writing and rewriting here. The only distractions are the occasional rustle of leaves from an animal passing by. Nocturnal beavers head home after their last night-time catch. Red-winged Blackbirds stoop and swoop to give caution when too near. We humans must be gentle around such intricate food systems because there is always Life outside where people are not. The crunching of leaves is Life or Death for the lesser fauna in the presence of the owls, hawks, and foxes. To be out here invites us to be quiet and respectful, as we are their guests.
Observations and ponderings at these quintessential writing spots have often been kept secret. The unwitting human destroys and disturbs habitat by merely existing. Rare fragile faint white forest flowers may die and wither when trampled upon. Certain nesting birds will not mate in our presence. To local wildlife, even distant talking can be disruptive due to fear. We are literally branch-snapping gigantic beasts with limbs thicker than the logs that built a muskrat’s home. Spending a day in a hammock silently writing to myself while watching wildlife though? Now that sounds like a productive adventure in a safe environment. May we be reminded just how much younger we are as a species compared to the elders living around us.
A constructive day of observing and dissecting multiple narratives into a readable entry sounds like a relaxing use of a free weekend to me. May this vignette be an editing session out of the pure enjoyment of the art. There will be intermittent check-ins between edited entries for a sense of place. If an animal makes an appearance or if the entry ends, I will attempt to shift the focus back to writing here at this park.
Moralities may carve their way into this work through a stream of consciousness. The whole point of being here is to slow down and recharge through these pages. There is absolutely no rush, dear reader. So join with me by proxy for an outdoor perspective while reminiscing with nothing else of requirement. To be honest and vulnerable to you, I am actually editing these journals outside. This has become a true love of mine; an engagement of patience and fortitude. Let me ask you quickly before we get started, when was the last time your phone was turned off?
I feel the internet eroding our attention spans and distracting us from living holistically. Our social requirement here in the marsh is to merely pay reverence to our local king, the Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias). An elder is stalking around in front of where I sit, pridefully digesting yet another speared fish, what looks to be a perch. He and she exist as masters of these wetland clearings. And they are fully aware that I am here. I am much too far away to make any sudden moves, so they won’t mind if I scratch away while they search for frogs to terrorize. Writing gives precedence to peace without being attached to a satellite.
Hidden marshes and colorful prairies are begging to be protected and, more importantly, respected. The only task at hand today is to mutually appreciate the most refreshing of tree breezes just as the birds do when lifting their necks. The stellar atmosphere provides us with a peaceful backdrop that is impossibly high in the sky. It is time to exist; time to look back at what once was…
The InterContinental lobby at the Minneapolis-St.Paul Airport
MSP Airport, Bloomington, Minnesota, United States of America 7:22 AM
Let me live! Let me write! Let me board this incoming flight. People hoard bags, clutching their tickets. Feet tap, ready to rush at a moment’s notice. A Delta flight attendant reads nervously from a prompt about COVID-19 protocols. Mumbling, I pull out a leather-bound journal from my bag. This is to be my in-flight reading material. When rereading a completed journal, jumbled thoughts may become stabilized in the forced free time. Editing these journals into a story of my own experiences helps to contextualize and process the complexities of the taken-for-granted ‘simplicities’ of the world. I could easily frame what happens in life to be all peachy, but we both know that’s not reality. This being said, I do enjoy focusing in and out of perspectives on the positive aspects of existence. I hope to convey this with comprehension. It’s time to board.
. . .
‘La température extérieure est -56 degrés Fahrenheit.’ My seat screen is lit for the first time since lift-off as I toy with the settings. The plane is cruising at 532 MPH to New York over Wisconsin through Michigan and Pennsylvania before New Jersey soon. There is only a half hour left until the ant-sized trains and buildings of Manhattan and the LaGuardia airport come into view. At this moment, there is a sky full of fluffy clouds and a circuit board of Roanoke farmland 37,000 feet below. Their shadows are cast as 100-ft-long ovals upon the pasture. I write and rewrite this last sentence and thank the steward for some pretzels while whimsying to myself.
You know, I hope articulating these ideas into conversation during this new business trip will help take away the difficulty of potential subsequent boring icebreakers. I intend to whittle down who I am into a presentable narrative when introducing myself. I want to establish a cornerstone of interest. I tend to avoid eye contact and derail conversations if the preparation for such an affair isn’t completed beforehand. It’s crazy to think how many pages have been filled with just premeditated conversations. This may or may not be unhealthy, I do admit that. Yet, pages go where they want to with a wandering mind, and this new job has been an unexpected blessing. Literary freedom is real. I could be anyone to these new coworkers, so I might as well be an honest version and a good person.
Time for a quick connecting flight from New York to Richmond Virginia.
We’ve landed! I’m eyeing a classic brick train station as my new coworker J______ and I drive our rental car past the iron sculptures and white stone towers welcoming us to downtown Richmond. Our conversation is proving to be productive. We regard each other as formidable people. As an immigrant, he finds curiosity in American recycling, farming aesthetics, and our constitutional freedoms.
In a quiet moment, we glance at a set of graffiti. Purple and blue mushrooms are consuming a naked man upon a boarded-up sandwich shop. We agree that financial stability is a goal to strive for in the absence of greed and drugs. For his privacy, I will refrain from sharing his traumatic past. He tells me of the genocide he escaped from as a child. It’s good to know we have become friends right off the bat.
If you ever find yourself in Richmond, I recommend walking along the cobblebrick sidewalks past the knick-knack shops and antique boutiques to a hole-in-the-wall Thai and Japanese fusion cafe called Mom’s Siam. Our crew is fully assembled for the first time encompassed by enticing aromas I can’t quite describe. I’m pretty sure the young waitress is a veg-head too after her smile and nod of approval as I order avocado/asparagus maki and vegetable red curry. I look out the window to an independent bookshop across the street keeping this thought to myself. There are vase-shaped trees who climb the slope. The walls of the building are an array of natural greens, grays, light blues, and white brickstone. They’ve been painted over so many times in the past century that they’ve become multicolored.
Mmmhmm! Thank you to those who have perfected maki and curry! As I look to see what the guys think of their plates, J____ laughs, noticing that I have been eating with chopsticks in my left hand and writing with my right. The guys smile but return to their electrical code conversation and are recommending we download an app to help us study for a journeyman’s exam. I tell them I ditched a smartphone years ago. J____ and I are the two young inexperienced ones of the group and the fellas have immediately recognized that I am not interested in becoming a careered electrician.
I turn again outside to a line of Segways riding past a Porsche. The privileged driver is making herself visibly upset as she bumps violently down the 15 mph cobbled road. An electric bicycle glides up the sidewalk undisturbed.
The food was quite delicious and we said our thanks to the restaurant owner before leaving. As we leave downtown and eventually the city, the spiderweb of the Richmond highway system has us driving past a billboard that simply states:
Be Ubiquitous.
I agree.
Good to be here.
The St. Francis River at the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge. Picture taken by [email protected]
There are millions of distractions to admire out here at the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge while recalling the trip to Virginia. The Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis) and the leaves of White Swamp Oaks (Quercus bicolor) are each existing while being mentally transported to Richmond. Another call from above from four gliding cranes is providing a window into what Life sounded like several hundreds of thousands of years ago. I have to say, being outside for any length of time without the bottomless pit of a scrolling void has the benefit of honest relaxation. Peaceful moments spent in the cattails of Mn’sota provides a better, more realistic demonstration of the actual passage of evolution & time.
There is a warm comfortable quiet. Only to find a pathetic parasite interjecting and protruding itself to pester this peace. MEH! Get offa me!
Regardless of the dog tick, I am here editing the first passages of a 162-page (and growing) notebook of transcribed journals lying on the ground to my left. Certain truths are being revealed:
Naps in a hammock between two pines can be deeper than on a couch, especially with a subtle breeze.
People forget, I include myself here, just how much time we spend wilting in front of a screen for hours on end. We forget the obtainable peace that is out here in the trees.
I have had friends whom I have brought to this park who visibly remember nature’s depth and warmth. The color comes back into their eyes while we hike.
Humans come here to stretch out our brains in harmony with wildlife. A simple day’s adventure doesn’t have to be far, or even touristy. Local sanctuaries can be far enough to use a car, yet close enough to come back from without having to rush. No need for white-knuckle driving when we can reflect at a relaxed pace on how the day was spent.
The actual flow of time within nature reveals the Life force that is around us. There are an unknown number of quadrillions+ of organisms on this planet. The harmless small creatures who are nearby on a hike, such as red squirrels and nuthatches, focus on us when we are in their territory. Yet, most of them are cautiously watching us because we are large animals and they understandably mistake us as a predator. If we are in a space long enough to show the nearby birds and rodents and all the other fellow forest dwellers that we have no interest in bothering them, these beings start to relax and move about their day without disturbance.
The ambiance is also more authentic and intrinsic out here when writing about them. They can be given a voice. It would be ironic if I were writing this at a desk or through an AI program. I am truthfully out here in the sticks writing this entry right now. I am choosing to be disconnected from the internet and oh what a blessing this decision has been. This is true refreshment.
Society has a stigma against being offline, but to those I say, whatever! I feel more whole now. I watch those who don’t go outside and those who can’t go without their screen dependency. Life seems so dull without our black mirrors. Don’t get me wrong, I do utilize the internet as a tool, as it was designed for upon creation. I would be a fool to fully ignore the complete integration of the world wide web into our societies. But, it is still just a tool. Complete internet sobriety is soul-crushing, trust me, I have tried. You are reading this writing in real time because I am choosing to turn off my phone. If I hadn’t, I would be up all night and day, wasting away my youth. Instead, I am spending my neurons towards writing to you. Thank you for taking the time to read this as there is no internet addiction necessary.
Sometimes we can’t live without ‘our’ phones, and that is quite alright, yet it is imperative that we do not forget what human existence was like before this system. Systems are implemented to help us function for our basic needs, official procedures, and emergencies. This is obvious. What I want to get across to you here is that people tend to be ignorant that we have existed without the internet for as long as we’ve been here.
I too had an iPhone for a short period. Once I switched off my phone and transitioned to a basic phone, I started intentionally making more decisions for myself. I found myself in hammocks more. I found myself to be the only one in my friend group who could get to places without referring to a GPS. I found myself feeling the Sun on my skin and talking to people. Most importantly, I found myself writing THOUSANDS OF JOURNAL PAGES, thousands. I hadn’t the slightest idea I had it in me to be able to do this. I turned off my phone. I encourage all, whenever you read this, whether I am still young or died 50 years ago, to read this outside in a safe local area if the weather allows you.
Our distractible sanities are expected to always be in character, intellectually engaged, and on-game. This is so tiring! You on the other hand have been reading my internal thoughts for well over a thousand words now I suspect. Meanwhile, I get to write in the presence of a silent massive Burr Oak elder who is spiraling upwards at their own passive pace. I mean, would you just look at that?! Is that bark not intricate or what? The transpiratory creature is towering over me, dropping seeds. The squirrels have been attempting to bravely enter my area this morning for an acorn. They address me as if I were a dragon sitting atop a mountain of ingots and nutritious pearls.
There are so many elders out here to be alive around. Some giants, such as the Ash tree, have propeller seeds. So do the Maples, but theirs are more of a comma shape. We used to call them helicopters as kids. In college, I learned to call them samaras, but honestly, we can call them whatever we want to. Green Ashes (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) have straight samaras. They look like micro canoe paddles, as if the dragonflies use them behind our backs. Their branching is opposite, creating a trident-like appearance at their tips. From a distance, Fraxinus pennsylvanica seems to swoop down and form a spade shape, much like the one I’m considering for my next writing spot.
See? You keep on doing that. You read what I was thinking about again. I guess you are a mind reader. I will say, lack of eye contact or social media presence has little to do with how much respect or attention we focus upon each other. Out here, we can exist as fast as the Elm trees sway.
Before I get into editing the next part of the business trip and before I move on to editing more of the journals of my past, I want to let you know that I am happier now. I smile now. How about that, I smile now. This body of work really has become a process of finding purpose. Life without knowing our obstacles is gut-wrenching. Let me show you how I became a better person through this process.
So let’s try this one on for size…let us pause for a moment, and take a nice looong deeeep breath. Inhale and hold in the air. Feel your lungs. Feel your heartbeat again. I invite you…
…to turn off your phone.
Copyright 2023 Casimir Curney. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.