A Mother's Day picnic in the forest with my wife, my sister, and her husband. Arriving at a fireplace and table along the creek in the early morning, we slowly cook and eat a large breakfast beside a roaring, morning camp fire. We spend the day sitting at the base of an ancient grove of redwoods, chatting about our lives and the way the world is going. I have been practicing mindfulness now for several days. This is the first day I have been tossed into the fire of conversational mindfulness. I'm not so sure such a thing is possible. All I can says is that I don't feel any compulsion to dominate any of the long, dangling conversation. The ability to listen to others seems to come to me effortlessly.

I don't think that listening to the talking of other people discharges much of my energy. I am still able to keep my own mind clear and calm, rather than hoping to react to spoken language. I know that if I talk much I sense weakness or fatigue. I'm not absorbing or reflecting when I talk. I'm releasing words locked up inside of me. The flow of energy coming in when listening and going out when talking is akin to breathing. The in and out, all day long, producing understanding between people, which makes me consider the huge trees under which we sit.

California redwood trees are some of the oldest living things on earth. The ones I sit under today are perhaps a thousand years old. Between the listening and the talking I tell myself how these trees have seen so much living, and yet change so slowly, while they maintain their health and steady growth. I read a quote that mindfulness stops the flow of constant uncontrolled thoughts, but opens a person to experiencing his feelings. I'm not sure what all this means to me. I often enjoy my thoughts, so to quiet or stop them makes me feel strangely different. The trees are quiet. The bark on them is soft and furry, like some kind of animal fur, maybe red fox, or perhaps a more gentle animal. Surely they have feelings.

They seem as if they could be sentient beings, happy and expressive, oblivious to time. Otherwise, would they keep growing for a millennium or more? How can anything be so big and live so long without saying anything? We talked about them, on and off, all day. Could they listen in? I would like to come back another day, alone, with no talking going on around me, and listen to them more attentively. Perhaps the limitation is within me. I have such poor hearing.