It’s like the place where Winnie the Pooh lives. It’s not the grounds to prove physical accomplishments, victories, or achievements.
About 11 miles south of Corvallis, off Peoria road, Snag Boat Bend is a simple walk in a quiet place. It offers grass, blackberries, willows, water, leaves and trees. There is a bog. Beavers live there. I saw six. I also saw two hawks, one egret, a trail of deer tracks, and a dead mouse. I heard a heron squawking. A nesting colony of herons resides in the trees.
It’s a good place to go if you want to process something that happened. It’s so low key you start wondering about things.
For example, earlier in the day I was waiting to cross a crosswalk. After several cars ignored me, one stopped. I held up my open palm as a way to say thanks. A sign of appreciation for the yield. Along the trail I wondered how that got started. Why does it feel natural to lift my hand, without thinking, toward a stranger as a signal of appreciation?
We were taught in a shooting drill at work that we should hold our open hands in the air. The quickest way to show no weapon. I think I’ve also heard that handshakes started as a way to show each person was unarmed.
It’s a sign of no harm.
Today, I think it can mean, “hi, I mean you no harm, and thank you for not harming me.” It’s sending respect through an open palm. It doesn’t matter what end you are on, just send it.
It’s disarming.
Upon reflection, I see the bog is a small pond.
Walking along the soft road, I practiced “prostrations.”
There was no one else out there, so I felt free to do novice prostrations, as in, not authentic ones.
A prostration is one way to show reverence. It’s also a decent form of physical exercise.
I used my dictionary app to clarify what I mostly understood. The movement is a form of prayer, a way to lose ego to a greater spiritual presence. This seemed wholly appropriate.
My prayer was a very slow, reverent burpee. It felt good. I did five in a row.
This act put me right down in the grass, dirt, the bottom, the yin. This is where the source chi is, the life reserves we need to keep in storage. It’s what you might call the batteries of life. But the batteries are organic, carry a mild odor of the collective, and are teeming with tiny explosions of life.
There is a lot of yin here. Earthy quiet, moist, the unseen.
The refuge is described as a riparian forest with backwater sloughs and seasonal wetlands. Check it out, but no dogs allowed.