How do you reset?

High-pitched gull calls came out of no where, lost in the salty fog. I stood in the grayness, the sea and sky blending so there was no horizon.

I love the ocean on a clear day, stretching far as my eye can see, but I’m not really here for the view. I stand on the beach, now all rounded stones. Flies swarm around piles of seaweed, buzz up around my face for a minute, and then I’m away from them.

The waves roar-crash followed by the clatter rumble of rocks shifting, then the hiss and quiet of the foam sliding back along the stones again. I close my eyes to listen and soak in the rhythm of the waves, the rolling push pull push pull. Roar-crash, rumble, hiss. Roar-crash, rumble, hiss. I breathe in deeply. Breathe out.

I come in the summer for the beach—long days of sun and sand and salty breezes, but it’s not just about the beach. I miss the salt air and the afternoon breezes. I miss the changing colors and moods of the water. I miss the ocean’s energy. I grew up with this energy, flowing around me, running through my veins. I don’t live with ocean everyday any more, and I need a dose of it sometimes to refuel, re-balance, reset.


What’s your reset?

Write with Me Wednesday—Write about how you reset

A tiny patch of hope—let’s grow

Today while I waited for the bus, I saw this:

March garden—tiny patch of hopeDoesn’t look like much does it?

But it’s my garden.

A little more melt and the rhubarb will start unfurling while we watch. A little more snow retreating and I’ll sprinkle spinach seeds and look for hints of cilantro in the herb section. Overly optimistic? Maybe. Yeah, a little.

But closer to the house, on the sunny side, the ground is truly bare. The mounds where the hops grow, the ever weedy flower bed that runs along the playroom, the patch of daily lilies by the back door—clear of snow.

Today while I waited for the bus, after I spied that tiny patch of garden ground, I picked up the kids’ rake, which had loitered by the back door all winter, and started raking out brown leaves and dead debris by the back door.

Then I squatted in my winter coat and tugged dead grass from the border. My fingers wiggled into the cold damp earth and came out muddy and chilled. I only poked for a few minutes, but when I went in they smelled like dirt. Ah, spring.

Snow still covers most of my yard and almost all of my garden. Yet I yearn to get out there and start planting. Today I scratched in the dirt.

Call it desperation.

Or hope.

I have my seeds. I’m ready to plant them. I’m ready to grow.

What are you yearning to do? What baby steps are you taking?

Grow is an online writing retreat—www.sarabarry.com

I’m looking forward to the growing season, and to Grow, my online writing retreat for spring. Come plant your ideas and see them bloom. I’d love to write with you.

Is snow really really white? Mindfulness for writers

picking blueberriesThis morning we had waffles with blueberry-maple syrup for breakfast, and even as I added more wood to the fire and looked out over the more than knee-deep snow, I remembered the bright sunshine on my back and the rhythmic work of this day. One of the reasons I love canning is pulling out a little summer in the dead-cold of winter. What canning captures in a jar, writing can capture on the page if we really connect to our senses and our experience.

To get that kind of detail on the page, we need to start by really paying attention in the moment.

Last night I was reading a mindfulness activity from this book. In this simple activity you ask kids to pretend they are Martians seeing something from Earth for the first time. Hand them a familiar object, and remind them that they have never seen it before. Ask them to look, touch, smell, listen, and taste and describe their experience.

The example uses raisins and kids taste them, feel them, even listen to them. They really notice them for the first time in their lives. Are there things you see, eat, hear every day without really noticing?

I could tell you I looked out over the white snow, and yesterday in the blinding sunlight it looked that way. It’s white mostly, but yellow where the dog peed and a little dingy and speckled where the snowblower flung it early this week. It’s scattered with debris from trees and footprints that become violet-gray hollows as the light shifts. But sometimes I need to stop, look close, forget “snow is white” to notice that.

It’s new to youWriting Prompt: Be mindful. Forget what you know and really notice what you experience with all your senses.

Try this mindfulness exercise yourself. You can use any object: raisins, your morning coffee, a dirty sock from the floor, a handful of snow. Imagine you’ve never seen it before.

Forget what you know or how you feel about this object, and simply observe it. After experiencing the the object fully and without judgment, write about it if you choose.

What did you notice?