{"id":694,"date":"2010-10-16T15:44:16","date_gmt":"2010-10-16T15:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/2010\/10\/samhain-meditations-on-the-rodota-trail.html"},"modified":"2010-10-16T15:44:16","modified_gmt":"2010-10-16T15:44:16","slug":"samhain-meditations-on-the-rodota-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/10\/samhain-meditations-on-the-rodota-trail.html","title":{"rendered":"Samhain meditations on the Rodota Trail"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

I took a walk a few days ago out on the Rodota Trail<\/a>, a lovely foot and bicycle path linking Sebastopol and Santa Rosa.  <\/span>It goes mostly through a oak savannah
\nfilled with big spreading gnarly old oaks<\/a>.  This time of year most everything else is a golden brown, lying dormant until
\nwinter’s rains arrive.  <\/span>I needed to
\nget out in nature and clear my head.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n

As I walked I pondered the fate of this savannah, where
\nsooner or later Sudden Oak Death<\/a> disease will kill most or all the coast live oak  trees<\/a> that stand so beautifully
\ntoday.  <\/span>Long ago, long before
\nhumans brought this disease to this continent, this region was filled with
\nenormous oaks, and the beauty I admired would then have
\nseemed eternal. <\/span><\/p>\n

Then I realized that long ago I would not be taking this
\npath, had it existed.  <\/span>Probably not
\nalone anyway, and certainly not so relaxedly.  <\/span>Back then the California grizzly was abundant, and encountering
\nthe wrong grizzly at the wrong time was a way to quickly be able to answer many absorbing metaphysical questions.<\/p>\n

If scientists worried about global warming are right, and
\nthe irrational opposition to their warnings proves effective, this scene will
\nbe very different in another 100 years. 
\n<\/span>It might even be under water, as an arm of San Francisco Bay moves up
\nhere. I was walking within a snapshot in time. We all do, from our earliest ancestors to our last descendants.<\/p>\n

This got me to meditating on two points.  <\/span>This land today is beautiful to me, and
\nI am at home here.  <\/span>Whatever the
\nafterlife might be, I most hope it will be a place like this earth,
\nwithout the cruelties and idiocies too many people who should know better
\nimpose on the planet and on one another. <\/span><\/p>\n

I am, all of us are, inseparable from the earth.  <\/span>Our eyes evolved for an earthly place,
\nour metabolism fits this place, our senses fine tuned to what make it possible
\nfor human beings to live on this planet. 
\n<\/span>Our brains reflect our environment as much as our hands and lungs. Whatever a disembodied intellect may be, if it never had a body it would not be anything like us.  <\/span>We are earthlings in the most basic
\nsense of the term.  <\/span>Our home is
\nworthy of our love and devotion.<\/p>\n

But different landscapes at different times were as
\nbeautiful to those living then as ours is to us. 
\n<\/span>The Pomo Indians<\/a> who lived here long before whites came saw their land as sacred, even with its
\ngrizzly bears.  <\/span>Plunk one of the
\nold inhabitants down and they would not be pleased by all the changes they saw,
\nthough perhaps by some. <\/span><\/p>\n

We who were not here then do not remember what has
\npassed. We never saw bunch grass flower fields in the spring nor a sky filled with waterfowl nor a truly healthy oak savannah.   <\/span>Nor do we know what the
\nfuture holds.  <\/span>If this area goes
\nunder water after things have stabilized, assuming they do, the climate will be
\ndifferent.  <\/span>But those here will
\nprobably find it beautiful as well, perhaps as we find Baja beautiful<\/a>.  Beauty is intrinsic to this world. <\/span><\/p>\n

As our chant goes<\/a>, “She changes everything She touches and
\neverything She touches changes.” <\/p>\n

The point I carried away at the end of that walk was to try not to
\nlose sight of the beauty of the moment even while fighting to preserve what we
\nlove.  <\/span>Don’t let the struggle get
\nin the way of remembering why we struggle, why we seek to honor, preserve, and
\nlove this place. <\/span><\/p>\n

And very importantly don’t forget that the best guide for
\nhonoring and preserving is to love it without grasping it, because change will
\nhappen and is part of the very nature of existence.  <\/span>There is a very wise Buddhist teaching, that if we are wise
\nwe look at our favorite cup as already broken.  <\/span>Keeping this in mind, we can enjoy using our cup without
\nletting our concern with its destruction get between us and our enjoyment.  <\/span>Of course we take good care of it, but
\nsooner or later it will be destroyed.  T<\/span>aking care of it is enhanced with that knowledge because it is the
\ntaking care, the loving attention, that matters most, not the eventual outcome. We never take it for granted.<\/p>\n

For as Samhain approaches we know all things pass, and that
\nthis is a feature, not a flaw.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I took a walk a few days ago out on the Rodota Trail, a lovely foot and bicycle path linking Sebastopol and Santa Rosa.  It goes mostly through a oak savannah filled with big spreading gnarly old oaks.  This time of year most everything else is a golden brown, lying dormant until winter’s rains arrive. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,4,105,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-pagan-holidays-and-sabbats","category-pagan-spirituality","category-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"\nSamhain meditations on the Rodota Trail - A Pagan's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/10\/samhain-meditations-on-the-rodota-trail.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Samhain meditations on the Rodota Trail - A Pagan's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I took a walk a few days ago out on the Rodota Trail, a lovely foot and bicycle path linking Sebastopol and Santa Rosa.  It goes mostly through a oak savannah filled with big spreading gnarly old oaks.  This time of year most everything else is a golden brown, lying dormant until winter’s rains arrive. …\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/10\/samhain-meditations-on-the-rodota-trail.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"A Pagan's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-10-16T15:44:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gus diZerega\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Samhain meditations on the Rodota Trail - A Pagan's Blog","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/10\/samhain-meditations-on-the-rodota-trail.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Samhain meditations on the Rodota Trail - A Pagan's Blog","og_description":"I took a walk a few days ago out on the Rodota Trail, a lovely foot and bicycle path linking Sebastopol and Santa Rosa.  It goes mostly through a oak savannah filled with big spreading gnarly old oaks.  This time of year most everything else is a golden brown, lying dormant until winter’s rains arrive. …","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/10\/samhain-meditations-on-the-rodota-trail.html","og_site_name":"A Pagan's Blog","article_published_time":"2010-10-16T15:44:16+00:00","author":"Gus diZerega","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/10\/samhain-meditations-on-the-rodota-trail.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/10\/samhain-meditations-on-the-rodota-trail.html","name":"Samhain meditations on the Rodota Trail - A Pagan's Blog","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-10-16T15:44:16+00:00","dateModified":"2010-10-16T15:44:16+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/d94ab0155d2780a0526af373b5c543f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/10\/samhain-meditations-on-the-rodota-trail.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/10\/samhain-meditations-on-the-rodota-trail.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2010\/10\/samhain-meditations-on-the-rodota-trail.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Samhain meditations on the Rodota Trail"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/","name":"A Pagan's Blog","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Gus diZerega","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/d94ab0155d2780a0526af373b5c543f2","name":"Gus diZerega","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/4f6\/4f6b5a87d91376eaf8d126df301ab8cdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/4f6\/4f6b5a87d91376eaf8d126df301ab8cdx96.jpg","caption":"Gus diZerega"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/author\/gdizerega"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}