Tree Salutations

These days I like to get outside in the morning and exercise. I use my outdoor (read: gross) yoga mat, bring some weights and other equipment, and use a video. My BFF (kittycat) is always nearby, prancing around and giving birds a really good hunting stare. It’s how she hunts—not by actually moving, just staring them down really hard, from very far away. I bet the birds feel it.

Afterward I usually feel really good and stretched out so I’ll cap the session by doing a ceremonial post-workout cartwheel just to make sure I still can, and call it a morning. Today, though, I stretched in the grass because I was losing my shade on my workout spot and the flesh-to-earth contact felt right. So then I did some yoga moves, like the eagle at my eagle statue, and then tree pose to the tree, which really felt more like tree salutations, which also felt right, greeting the tree.

This tree is a gem. First of all, we somewhat haphazardly planted it when we moved in and then years later, built a little patio that is serendipitously right in the morning shade path of the tree. It stands as a sentinel of morning, a summer shield and harbinger of cooler temps, and I make sure to revere it a little when I’m out there. Then I’ll sit on the patio and write, still shaded, until 10am which is when the sun creeps onto me, forcing me to finish my project. It’s a good deadline for me. “Finish it or else: sunburn.” Other people are intrinsically motivated or use timers or carefully constructed plans or are otherwise generally disciplined. Seems that I work well under threat of physical harm, especially when I can see it inching closer to me. It’s pretty effective.

As I sit, think, and write, I also watch the birds. We have a very low-hanging birdfeeder, to which the birds are probably like, “Seriously? c’mon.” I watch them all. I tell the collared doves how pretty they are and ugly they sound. Actually they have two sounds: A pretty coo and a hideous squawk. So they probably know. Birds always know. And I watch the magpie jump down from its perch on the fence and I get up and tell it to scram, that it’s not welcome here. Kitty stares hard to back me up.

This is my morning routine. I not only love it but I am pretty protective of it. If someone wants to make a plan to meet up in the morning I might say,

“Ooh 9:00? That’s right in the middle of tree shade time.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Can we make it 10:01?”

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