Discovery Park Meditations

When you walk daily on the same trail, you get to feel the seasons changing minute by minute it seems. This lovely Junuary with rain most mornings, Discovery Park feels damp and ancient. In the six-clock hour, you are mostly alone with shaggy ferns that reach from trail-bounds to embrace your lower legs. Moss grows thickly up 80 year-old trees, and some old growth. Licorice ferns tell the time. With the storms this season, the park changes morning to morning. Sometimes a huge tree has exploded with the windy weather, and will lie along your path. Only then will you notice the infestation and rot. 

Still this park is alive. Leave your ear-buds home and listen to the birds. So many at this time of year, the calls run together. This morning I was privileged to see a barred owl almost posing for me, right off the trail. It wasn’t bothered while I stopped to catch a photo. Living so close to the wildness never gets old.