Metal Bird

 I was waiting for Mya to pee. Sitting in the morning shady spot in the backyard, reading another essay from The Anthropocene Reviewed. 

I happened to look up at the sky at this perfect moment. Our house is under the path of planes going and coming from ATL. You usually can only see their jetstream, but on this exceptionally clear morning, I could see the plane, impossibly small in the endless sky. It's one of those everyday miracles that you only realize is a miracle when you pause to think about it. 

A ~45-ton metal bird that is perfectly designed to carry itself and a group of distracted passengers into our sky and across vast (and sometimes not so vast) distances. As if it is weightless, it tracks across the sky until it disappears behind the pine trees that frame our backyard. 

In that single moment, my field of vision caught the plane, the waving of the American flag newly displayed on my neighbor's front porch, the trees, the blue sky, white, fluffy clouds. My ears could pick up the distant whoosh of the plane's engine, birdsong, our air conditioning unit rumbling. 

It was then that I realized that everything I was observing and hearing was distracting me from everything that was in my head, the constant cacophony of my thoughts telling me all of the things that are wrong with me and all of the things that I'm afraid of. 

It occurs to me that this kind of distraction is why I like hiking. Being outside reminds me that there is so much more than the world inside my head. There's tiny mushrooms and wildflowers and interesting rocks and bugs. There's the sensation of wind and sweat on my skin, and there's everything that isn't self-loathing and fear and catastrophizing and invasive. 

From hike at Burnt Mountain Preserve, 7/3/2021

I've always said that I suck at meditation, but really, being outside is meditative for me. Hiking is meditation. Meditation, in a way, is observation. It's noticing. It's realizing that the world is bigger than you and your anxiety. It's the cliché of "stop and smell the roses." 

And when I look at it that way,  meditation is kind of a superhero to anxiety's supervillain. 

Do you practice meditation? What forms of untraditional meditation help you?