The sounds of bliss: the gentle lapping of the lake against the gravely shore; stiff madrona leaves rustling as a breeze freshens; swallows chirping as they loop above the green water; mallards skimming the lake as they touch down, then a flutter of wings as they shake off water; the distant roar of a stronger wind rushing down the Olympic Mountains and spilling into the glacial cavern that embraces Lake Crescent.

Near the woods you can smell fir cones opening as the day warms, drawing pitch out of the woody blooms.

douglas fir cones blooming

I just watched a man skip a flat stone far out into the lake—it hopped eight or nine times before its final plink into the water. What fun it must be for that stone to be suddenly airborne! I don’t pretend to understand the physics of it, though I suppose the forward thrust must be greater than the resistance of the water in decreasing amounts. But what causes the stone to bounce up from the water over and over? Since I can’t explain it, I’ll settle for magic.

The rock faces that rise up from Lake Crescent have seen it all. They were witness to this place when it was all snow and ice. Then as the glacier retreated, these rocks warmed in the sun and began to split open to welcome plant life. While the second-growth fir trees that rim this lake now are but 50 or 60 years old at most, the rocks they cling to are as old as time.

There is one broad rock face that I love to sit across from, and I sense its density, its ability to absorb human emotions and pain. I can tell it nothing new. People have knelt on this shore for millennia and no doubt spilled the contents of their souls into the lake for purification and transmutation. This place was once a meeting ground, a crossroads where native peoples from the Pacific Coast met and traded with inland tribes. It still has that sense of accrued spiritual energy, of a healing ground. I add my whispers to the breeze and send them across flat water to merge with the ancient rock.

MEDITATION VIDEO

CONTEMPLATIONS

• Do you have a special healing ground?
• Do you need to find one?
• Have you tried confiding in a rock? (They’re very good listeners.)
• If you are troubled, try keeping a stone in your pocket for unseen conferences, to keep you grounded to the truth about yourself.

Take a walk around Lake Crescent here.

In this magnificent region, there really is water, water everywhere—and most of it is safe to row in during the warmer/calmer months of the year. Most people up here paddle around in kayaks, but I wanted to be able to take my dog with me, and I needed a boat I could manage all by myself. So I got an inflatable boat, which tucks into the trunk of my car and allows me to explore some wonderful places. All I have to do is hook up the pump to my car’s lighter and voilà—in 15 minutes I have a boat.

For our first foray of the summer–and to celebrate the Summer Solstice–we paddled up Chimacum Creek, a restored Coho salmon run surrounded by land trust protected woods near Port Hadlock, Washington. (Don’t know why I wrote “we paddled”—the dog just lazed around in her fetching Float Coat and Doggles, left). It’s an easy trip—as long as you’re not working against the tide, which flows up the creek from Port Townsend Bay.

I’m always the only one on the creek when I go there, which makes for a perfect experience. There are no houses or other buildings visible from the creek, so it’s a relatively pristine location. The water amplifies the bird songs and calls, and it’s easy to imagine that it’s hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Eagles monitor our progress from fir trees along the bank and a heron calls up ahead in her deep throaty voice. Kingfishers perch low above the creek waiting for lunch to appear.

Where the creek enters Port Townsend Bay extensive eel grass beds surround the mouth, providing habitat for young salmon as they adapt to living in saltwater before they begin their long migration. This exceptionally pristine estuary is one of the only Puget Sound estuaries without extensive development. It has a gorge-like section with 100-foot high, wooded banks, 200-300 feet apart, which enhances the sensation of being quite apart from the rest of the world.

I sing a song of thanks and it echoes back to me on a faint breeze.

I also love my boat because it puts me very low in the water, and since I sit directly on the bottom of the boat and lean back against its side, I can feel the creek’s movement and energy communicating directly with my body. It’s almost like floating in my back. I close my eyes and absorb the filtered sunshine and allow the holiness of this place to permeate my skin.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• How do you find sacred space in nature?
• Can you give yourself the gift of time in a pristine environment, if only for a brief visit?
• Have you taken time lately to slow way down, to match your heartbeat to a duck drifting downstream?
• Have you made a positive difference in the life of some land or water near you?
• How do you celebrate the beginning of summer?

Take another rowing trip here.

Here in Washington state, we are famous for the prodigious rain that falls. So it won’t surprise you that most springs our many rivers roar down out of their snow-capped mountains, full, frothy and icy cold.

This spring I stood at the edge of such a river, the Dosewallips, which tumbles down from the Olympic Mountains through mixed woods of fir, alder and big leaf maple. I feel the energy, the power generated by the outpouring—even if it isn’t ever transposed into electricity. I attune myself to such life force, such vivacity, and inhale the highly ionized oxygen. Unlike the rhythm of the sea which often relaxes and soothes me, the relentless rushing of this river charges me up, as if I were a battery connected to its current.

I lie down on a mossy bank and dangle my hands into the water to feel the swift pressure of the river against my skin. Frigid spray ricochets off the rocks and stings my face, a new form of hydro massage. Leaves and alder cones rush by on their way to Hood Canal, each one a tiny boat at the mercy of the whimsical water. I roll over onto my back and savor the morning glow on the thick chartreuse fur that encases many alder trunks. I imagine that so much moss has an acoustic effect on the sound of the river, a softening of it, as these trees reach into the river for their sustenance.

Today begins another lunation, which I’m naming the High River Moon. It is about surges, energy, vitality and freshness. I hope you’ll invite its special light into your life.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What force is evident in your life now?
• What energizes you?
• Where do you feel most alive?
• Have you surrendered to the currents pulsing through your life, or do you feel you can control them?
• Will you tap into the new moon energy to enhance projects or ideas you are developing?

MEDITATION VIDEO

This is simply a few minutes beside the Dosewallips River, so you can experience it for yourself. Turn up the volume and immerse yourself…the water’s fine.

Visit the Dosewallips River in another season here.

Can you find a place where the cares of daily life slip off your shoulders like a silk shawl slipping to the ground? Can you create such a place in your mind, color it richly and make it real? Can you go there whenever you like? For me that place is Lake Crescent in the Olympic Mountains. This is how it looked last week when I returned from Neah Bay, with the blushing alders painting the lake pink. I am never more centered, grounded and calm than when I walk along and sit beside this magnificent lake.

I urge you to do whatever it takes to give yourself the gift of a place like this in your life. You deserve this much inner delight and peace. We all need this escape. Close your eyes. You can go there now.

sometimes the water is dark, it's all right...click to enlarge

This magical spot is called La Poel. Inhale the pink spring light. Exhale everything that doesn’t belong here. Inhale joy.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What do you see reflected in your lake?
• Where do you feel most grounded?
• What color is the light in your most sacred place?
• What do you call your La Poel?

Take a walk around Lake Crescent and into the old woods here.

meditation on an autumn river

First stop: the Dosewallips River in Brinnon, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town, but home to the fabulous Whitney Rhododendron Garden.

The Dosewallips River flows slowly and quietly as it widens at its mouth. Where it streams into the glacier-carved Hood Canal it merges easily—fresh and saltwater combining without hesitation or resistance. Big leaf maples glow along the bank, casting golden ripples across the river in a swath of light like morning moonlight. Cottonwoods scent the air with their sweet sap.

Dosewallips River in autumn...click to enlarge

The river is at its shallowest, awaiting the first rains of autumn. I walk out onto the exposed rocky bottom and enjoy the view upriver into the jagged Olympic Mountains. Only a sugaring of snow has fallen so far this season, but even that has melted in the October sun. The craggy mountains are bare on this side of the range—there is no hint of the permanent glaciers hidden within this vast circle of wild mountains—a snowy center, like a surprise cream filling in a French pastry.

Ducks drift lazily down the river, resting up for their trek south. One pauses, stands and flutters his wings as if doing a pre-flight test, and at the same time revealing how shallow the water is.

Dosewallips River delta...click to enlarge

Next stop: Alderbrook, sunset along the canal. The jagged Olympics are etched starkly against an aqua sky, and thin pink and plum clouds hover above the peaks catching the last glow of the day. These are uninhabited mountains, without alpine villages or lodges or even cabins. Pure wilderness. Part of the earth left whole, allowed to inhale air cleansed by the Pacific and exhale clean, conifer-scented breaths.

A lone seal skims the flat water, his bulbous head drifting along the canal like a lost fishing float. Earlier I saw him clamber onto a dock to warm himself in the scant autumn sun. I wonder if he dreads winter, the shorter days? In spring, does he, too, celebrate the returning light and rising temperatures? Or is it all good weather for a seal—just different? While the mild shifts of weather in this area may not affect him much, he must be aware of fluctuations in his food supply. Hood canal seals are known to dine on the wealth of salmon found here.

Olympic Mountains watch over Hood Canal...click to enlarge

As the sunset drains from the sky, ducks tuck against the shoreline for the night. The seal still cruises the darkening waters, sending navy blue ripples in his wake…is he sport fishing or just having fun?

The outline of the Olympics persists long after sunset, backlit by twilight, then starlight beginning to glimmer like fairy dust scattered across the sky—or flickering points of light like candles for my birthday cake. That day is just around the bend, and I’m celebrating early while the sun still shines. Rain is predicted for my day, as is often the case in the far northwest.

So today I turned my face to the sun and held the warm glow as a memory to rekindle later in the week.

I gathered scarlet maple leaves and absorbed their hot redness into my veins, enriching my blood with their life force. Though it is cold that has turned them red, it is their symbolic heat that I hold in my heart like a lover’s smile on Sunday morning. This feeling of being fully warm must last far longer—four to five months at least—until we spin back around our ellipse, re-greening with hope and new life and chartreuse afternoons.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What nurtures your heart?
• What can you store away to warm your winter days?
• What shapes and hopes and ideas are etched against your night sky?
• What fresh air do you need to welcome into your life?

DOWNLOADABLE AFFIRMATION CARD

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OFFERING

Enjoy the beauty of autumn along the Dosewallips River on a mousepad from Cafe Press. (Click the mousepad to learn more.)

Crave more mountain trips? Climb into other mountains here.