Hello: there will always be something that is not just right.
In late September, I take to the hills for a walkabout on Yom Kippur, day of atonement, the finale to the Jewish High Holy Days. We are expected, on this day, to review our year and ask for forgiveness—or at least understanding—for sins committed.
I am in the mountains.
After some aimless wandering, I take a seat on a forested river bluff, far up enough that I can’t hear the river’s slick bubbling. Leaves fall, especially yellow ones, most of these coming from birches. I can tell that other colors and the rest of fall are not far off.
Because I am alone and can, I listen: a donkey is braying from the other side of the river, and there is the whine of a saw coming off of another ridge. Crow cawing, dog howling. Acorns accelerate toward earth with a pleasing rrripping sound as they pierce the canopy and then land with a thwack on the wet duff—whereupon my own “duff” rests.
After a time, my bottom grows damp, but never mind. It is good. A wood thrush visits, so briefly and in so shadowed a place—alighting for no more than a second among the overlapping stems of rhododendrons—that the only visual impressions left on my brain are a distinctively round unblinking eye and a spotted white breast. It is a presence so brief yet so stunning, that the words “thank you, bird” pass through my mind after it is gone.
Boisterous chickadees acrobatically explore the canopy. I crane my neck, trying to discern their black and white markings. They know that I am here, blinking into the green and yellow mosaic of leaves. Light leaking through tricks my eye into perceiving the birds as small dark silhouettes. Still, I recognize them by their scolding voices. Titmice are here as well: one comes close and cocks a shining black eye at me. I don’t want to be perceived as an intruder.
Earlier, on the way up the steep hill, a large grape leaf lying in the path made me stop. It was flipped over, its velvety underside serving as a generous plate for silver pebbles of rain: an appetizer of condensed early morning light! Why ask for more than this? Farther along the path, I paused again for a long-shafted brown-and-white-striped feather: hawk or vulture or turkey, all of which I have seen before in these hills. I left it on the wet ground, there being no need to possess it.
My sin this past year? It seems to have been my long-standing habit of worrying--and letting worry hold me back, keeping me from becoming.