A Walk at the Lake

Along the Path  © Candy Paull 

“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”

— John Muir

Year in, year out, I walk at this lake. Round and round, an endless circle of seasons and life changes. The path may seem to cover the same territory, but every walk brings its own unique views and its own visual treasures. This lake is always the same, yet always new. It is the place of comfort when life feels overwhelming, a place to pace out my joys, and a place to meet others in the fellowship of the trail. 

Turtle Convention © Candy Paull 

Squirrel Nutcase © Candy Paull

The turtles emerge from the muddy depths to sun on logs. Blue heron cautiously stalks the prey that swims beneath the green, green duckweed. Deer browse in the bushes and drink at the shoreline. Squirrels dig for nuts buried beneath the bark overlaid on the trail. Canada geese cry as they fly overhead. The honeysuckle weaves its scent on the bank in the late spring. Tender wildflowers appear as winter ends, and autumn leaves paint the landscape in shades of russet and gold. The water rushes over the dam and down the creek bed after the rains. The spring peepers sing their brief song of fleeting joy. The trees begin the spring with a soft gold green mist, then become the brightest crayon green, then deepen into dark forest green as the summer wears on. Then the edges begin to fray as August passes into September, and by October and November the leaves turn to golden fire, then brown ash, and then back into naked branches shivering against a cloudy grey sky. Every day is a good day at the lake, and every season speaks to my soul.

“How many hearts with warm red blood in them are beating under cover of the woods, and how many teeth and eyes are shining! A multitude of animal people, intimately related to us, but of whose lives we know almost nothing, are as busy about their own affairs as we are about ours.”

— John Muir

Though there are many beautiful places to walk in the Nashville area, this one lake calls to me over and over. Before I even moved to town, a friend shared the beauty of this lake, his own sacred place of renewal. And when I moved to town twenty years ago, the lake become the center of my natural universe, the place that called me at the end of a day of writing. I would drive across town and plan my day around a walk at the lake, whether it was a snatched twenty minutes before the winter sun set or a long leisurely summer tramp around the entire lake. It has been healing and nourishment to body and soul. I have met friends and cultivated relationships there, but even more, I have washed my own spirit clean in nature's healing bounty so that I was able to live with myself once again. 

Blue Heron Searches © Candy Paull 

“I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. ”

— Henry David Thoreau

“Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.”

— John Lubbock

Though I love spring and fall the best here in Middle Tennessee, the summer green woods offers its own pleasures. I go prepared for bugs and sweat, and plan to look for subtle beauties that I often miss in more exciting seasons. The long slow summer days remind me that life takes time to ripen. I have lately shot photos of water, taking pleasure in the abstract patterns that reflect trees and sky, and provide an ever evolving background to animals or flowers I see on my walks. I have been learning that the color of creeks and lake reflections can be a palette that pleases the eye as much as the more vivid colors of spring flowers or autumn foliage, if one has the eyes to see. I learn again to allow the slow magic of summer to work its way into my soul. 

Context

Look Closer

Pattern 

“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order. ”

— John Burroughs

Young and Curious © Candy Paull 

“Nature is sanative, refining, elevating. How cunningly she hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morning dew! Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love. ”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you are feeling tired and jaded, or trapped in the seemingly endless circle of your own futile thoughts, I suggest that a walk at lake or shore, an immersion in woods and wildness, is the most invigorating way to renew your faith in life. I love books, and the best are very wise, but sometimes the only wisdom I am able to receive comes from nature itself. May this little meditation inspire you to take a walk at a lake, a seashore, or other wild place. I know you will come back with renewed spirits and a fresh perspective. 

Summer Secrets © Candy Paull 

“Healing Waters

Each night I gaze upon a pond,
A Zen body sitting beside a moon.
Nothing is really there, and yet
it is all so clear and bright.
I cannot describe it.
If you would know the empty
mind your own mind must
be as clear and bright
as this full moon with water. ”

— Chiao Jan

“I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets. It has given me blessed release from care and worry and the troubled thinking of our modern day. It has been a return to the primitive and the peaceful. Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and benumbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me — I am happy.”

— Hamlin Garland

Reflecting  © Candy Paull 

Now that I have so many wonderful tools available on my new website, I am delighted to discover ways to share a little more of my life with you through a blog that can look more like a photo essay. I love to take photos and have taught myself to see and experience life in new ways because of my digital camera. Now I'll be able to share more of that visual magic with you. The photos in this essay were all taken at Radnor Lake. And of course, as always, I'll share quotes and ideas and resources to inspire and remind you that you are rich in the things that really count. 

Turtle Reflections © Candy Paull

Deep Listening

Blossomlight

God’s call is mysterious;
it comes in the darkness of faith. 
It is so fine, so subtle,
that it is only with the deepest silence within us
that we can hear it.
Carlo Caretto

Listening can be understood as seeking guidance from a higher level of consciousness and understanding. By entering into a stillness that is holy—that contains wholeness—silence brings us into our own wholeness. We remember—and re-member—pulling together that which has been lost in the fragmentation and distraction of daily living. 

In this silence, from this stillpoint, is the only place where true choice can be made. Because we become quiet, we learn to hear the I AM at the heart of creation, and in our own hearts, so that we can choose from the center of our being instead of the periphery of outward circumstance. Then each choice is made with clear intention. We are inspired from within instead of reacting from what is happening without. Though outer circumstances change, this deep listening keeps us centered in a larger spiritual reality. 

As we grow into our ability to experience inner and outer silence, our interior lives become richer. We discover that the silence and the void we feared is actually a living presence. The “still small voice” is now the insistent pulse of the Life Force making itself known in us. 

If you have ever been in a place of awesome beauty—the ocean, a mountain top, a cascading waterfall, the edge of the Grand Canyon—you have tasted this presence. Silence like a great cathedral allows you to enter the mystery and beauty of your own inner presence. 

• Exercise: Take an extended walk in wild places. Let nature nurture you and savor a silence full of living creatures, wind and weather, and all the sounds that speak to the soul in a way that human-made sounds cannot.

Quotes:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Henry David Thoreau

A mystic is not a mysterious person, but is one who has a deep, inner sense of Life and of his unity with the Whole.
Ernest Holmes

The source of all abundance is not outside you. It is part of who you are. …The fullness of life is there at every step. The acknowledgement of that abundance that is all around you awakens the dormant abundance within. Then let it flow out.
Eckhart Tolle

The crust of the everyday must be broken through.
Eugene Delacroix

If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.
Tao Te Ching

Let us remain as empty as possible so that God can fill us up.
Mother Teresa

Prayer can be understood as the gathering of attention. The inner effort, which is the work of gathering and recollection, leads to peace within. When this peace has gathered sufficient strength it can face the world in a new way.
Kabir Edmund Helminski

The greatest security we can have, in the face of antagonism and the inner and outer complexities of life, is to be consciously connected with the unchanging sense of self at the core of our being.
John Maxwell Taylor

The boasted strength of the personal self is really its weakness; true strength lies in that which dwells behind the personal self. We may draw on the infinite, if we will, and thus achieve the seemingly impossible.
Paul Brunton

…that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on—
Until the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul; 
While with an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
William Wordsworth

One instant is eternity,
eternity is the now.
When you see through this one instant, 
you see through the one who sees.
Wu-Men

Your endeavor, then, is not so much to find God as it is to realize His presence and to understand that this presence is always with you.
Ernest Holmes

The secret of meditation is silence: no repetitions, no affirmations, no denials—just the acknowledgement of God’s allness, and then the deep, deep silence which announces God’s Presence.
Joel Goldsmith