All posts in category nature

yellow light beckoning

These brushes with low-level fame grow dimmer as the years tear the flesh from our bones. In my mind’s eye I still see it all before me. How this was done. How it could’ve gone. Sneaking out of bed at the wrong time. Not primed in our prime. The time it takes to falter. The dreams you’ve lost to waking. Sleep-walking through daytime hours, thrashing through evening dreamtime.

These thrushes with flute-like voices grow stronger as my time on this earth strips youth off this sapling. Near-sighted I stumble but still know how it ends. How it must follow. Staying up late when it feels right. Fueled for the long haul. Steady walking to the light, the fields, the tall pines. The dreams I fall into every night. Breathing in, breathing out. Waiting for my reward.

7 Comments

by sean on May 10, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in breathing rights, dreams, in-between, life, nature, parts of the whole, peace

Posted by sean on May 10, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/05/10/yellow-light-beckoning/

sf trip: days three & four

Note: I apologize for the terrible quality of these photos. Most were taken with my cell phone, which doesn’t have a flash.

The fun mostly came to a close on Day Three, when the conference officially started. Suddenly I found myself trapped in a bland hotel meeting room for most of the day. Horrifying. The most exciting presentation I saw was given by Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. If you don’t know about Brewster and the Archive, that link might warrant a look. They are doing important work over there. That’s all I’ll say about the conference, though, because I don’t think the majority of the content would be of interest to readers of this blog.

I snuck down to the Ferry Building on Day Three for more donuts. I just couldn’t help myself. Even though it was almost a 20-minute walk from the conference hotel, it was worth it. What can I say…I have a thing for donuts. And vegan donuts are not easy to come by, at least not where I live.

Goodbye, vegan donuts…

I ate at Loving Hut one more time, too. Even though it was in a mall…blech.

Goodbye Loving Hut…

On the morning of Day Four, I had to check out of my hotel. The room was a bit small but it suited me fine. They also had free fair trade coffee every morning and a free wine happy hour every evening. The irritating thing was there was no free internet anywhere in the hotel, not even in the “business center.” But at least they printed our boarding passes for free.

Goodbye hotel lobby…

We had to leave as soon as the conference ended and headed straight to the airport. As I stared out the car window at the hills, I didn’t feel ready to leave. There was so much more to explore! I knew I would have to return some day.

At the airport, I ate the only burrito of the trip, which was surprisingly good for airport food. I wasn’t looking forward to the redeye flight staring me down, so I consoled myself with a double espresso (on the company dime, of course!).

Goodbye California clouds…

Once home, I consoled myself with a full day of birding on the weekend. The bright songs and flashy colors of the forest songbirds were the perfect salve for the vague unsettled feeling I usually get upon returning from a trip.

Hello green green park lands…

9 Comments

by sean on May 9, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in brewster kahle, clouds, donuts, food, internet archive, nature, san francisco, travel, veganism

Posted by sean on May 9, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/05/09/sf-trip-days-three-four/

stump life

1 Comment

by sean on March 30, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in mushrooms, nature

Posted by sean on March 30, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/03/30/stump-life/

in the pines

Monday afternoon, along the creek, I found a copse of pines and entered there. It was a day of reckoning, I reckoned, facing forward, rooted in time’s peat. I crushed the needles in my hands and breathed. A white-throated sparrow flitted at my feet. It was a moment, in the pines, and I lived it.

1 Comment

by sean on March 22, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in age, birds, breathing rights, life, nature, senses, trees

Posted by sean on March 22, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/03/22/in-the-pines/

muse totems

Leave a comment

by sean on March 21, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in nature

Posted by sean on March 21, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/03/21/muse-totems/

view from the 39th step

1 Comment

by sean on March 20, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in breathing rights, hiking, nature, trees

Posted by sean on March 20, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/03/20/view-from-the-39th-step/

good night, friday

As Friday winnows to a close I address the day in retrospect. This morning I set out with the sole purpose to watch birds for the first time in many weeks. I traveled to the rare and alien Southwest Area Park, aka SWAP. There I found two pairs of Northern Shovelers. I did not find an Orange-crowned Warbler, as had been previously spotted at SWAP. However, I redeemed this loss by flushing an American Woodcock, one of my all-time favorite birds. With my trusty bins clamped to my face, I followed that oddly aerodynamic buffy bullet as it shot full-speed up and over the reeds, far away from the deer track where I stood. Elation! Later, hundreds of migrating blackbirds flew overhead, filling the air with the ethereal music of their contact calls. Spring is on its way! Ah, if only every day were filled with such moments!

1 Comment

by sean on February 25, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in american woodcock, birding, birds, breathing rights, calmness, joy, nature, northern shoveler, orange-crowned warbler

Posted by sean on February 25, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/02/25/good-night-friday/

shadow forecaster

The wind rises and scatters my attention span. How to greet a late January day warmed to the low 60s on the Fahrenheit scale? I feel a twinge of guilt enjoying it, knowing how unnatural it is and wondering much of this is our fault. Birds are migrating sooner, only to find food not yet abundant in their summer haunts. Southern insects are expanding their ranges northward. [Gardeners, take note!] Mother Nature’s long-established cues are failing her denizens. Are these little and not-so-little signs of impending ecological collapse? Perhaps. It would make sense. And surely we deserve it. Too long have we moved at the speed of profit, with blinders plastered to our fat heads. Our slavering consumerist jaws know no bounds. We think with our wallets, and we don’t remember any other way. We forgot how to mend and learned instead how to slide cards through readers. The problem is colossal in scale. The solutions too little, too late. So maybe all we can do now is pull up some chairs and wait for the end of this chapter of life on our planet. Bleak, perhaps, but it could just be my shadow speaking out again. Some days I let it do all my talking for me, and I just sit back and stare at the clouds.

Leave a comment

by sean on January 31, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in doom and gloom, existence, gardening, horror of humanity, human behavior, human nature, migration, nature, seasons, shadow, warmth, wind, winter

Posted by sean on January 31, 2012

https://sd-stewart.com/2012/01/31/shadow-forecaster/

the other day

The other day was sitting on a rock outcropping with AR, gazing down on a river and across at leafless beech trees and listening to long lonely trains rolling to the city, a late osprey charging after them as if to hitch a ride, its cry wilder than anything we have to offer. The other day was also another acceptance and feeding chickadees from my hand. Even in this overly manufactured living space nature offers us redemption from our countless sins against it. I am grateful.

Leave a comment

by sean on November 9, 2011 • Permalink

Posted in birds, city life, nature, redemption, urban nature, writing

Posted by sean on November 9, 2011

https://sd-stewart.com/2011/11/09/the-other-day/