Wonder Walks: Noticing
Between recent travel and writing projects, I haven’t led any Wonder Walks the last few months, so I thought I’d take a couple of blog posts to share some of the guiding principles that I explore on the walks.
Today, the relationship between noticing and presence.
One of my favorite ways to come into presence in a landscape is to greet the world around me. This forces me to be clear about what or who I’m seeing—Hello, juniper! Hello, Douglas Fir! Just like with a gratitude practice, I find that a ‘noticing practice’ leads to more abundance—the more we notice, the more the earth calls to our attention. Because once I notice the Douglas fir, I can see the amber-colored sap crystallized on the bark of the fir. Pausing to look more closely, my nose is drawn to the citrus smell of the sap.
And now that I’ve greeted the juniper and the Douglas fir, who else do I see around me? Oh! Hello magpie, whose chatter I hadn’t registered, but who seems to settle back down now that I’ve said hello and acknowledged him. Hello, chickadee flitting through the branches of the fir tree. Hello, Townsend’s solitaire perched atop the juniper tree. The remaining leaves of the aspen rustle, calling my attention not just to the aspen, but to the wind moving through the leaves.
Although I started Wonder Walks with the idea that I could share these practices, I’ve found that I learn just as much by discovering what other people notice, which often isn’t the same as what I’m paying attention to. On the first Wonder Walk I led, one of the participants stopped to call our collective attention to a “cattail highway” that was bisecting the wetlands of the nature sanctuary we were walking in. I’ve walked that path countless times but had never paused to notice the way the cattails grew in that area. As we stood there, an ermine popped into sight, the black tip of its white tail visible as it slipped away just as suddenly. It was such a gift to see the ermine all together—and had Katie not called our attention to the cattails, I feel certain we would have missed the moment entirely.
This practice works just as well in an urban setting as a forested one. When I lived in New Haven, I’d use my walks on the way to class to release my busy and worrying mind. I’d look for five things around me that could bring me back into presence: 1. Blue sky 2. Leaves on the tree 3. Oh, those leaves filter sunlight 4. The sun is out 5. Wow, the sun through the trees is making an interesting shadow on the ground. Which would lead me to 6. Look at the flower coming up through the sidewalk and 7. Oh, there’s another flower over there! And 8. That cozy cat in the window 9. The cat is looking at a robin and 10. There’s so much going on in this world outside of my brain.
Noticing gives way to curiosity. On a walk recently, Chema called our attention to the juniper berries and noticed that they seemed to be shrinking. Though plump a week or two ago, most had shriveled and shrunk, fading from a bright Indigo to a dusky blue. Aha! Perhaps that’s why the Townsend’s Solitaires have been quiet the past few days. I recently learned that Townsend’s Solitaires (grey birds with a distinct white eye ring that behave like flycatchers even though they’re in the thrush family) transition their diet from insects in the summer to berries in the fall and winter. And while the birds had been thick amongst the junipers these past few weeks, perhaps they’ve now moved on to a different berry source.
This simple detail—the juniper berries are shrinking—opened an avenue for curiosity and connection to the world around me.
In the next post, I’ll continue exploring the relationship between attention and empathy.
What helps you stay in presence?
The next time you’re out on a walk, what are five things you notice?
Who can you greet with curiosity today?