23S Week 7 Nature Walk through Mt Auburn Cemetery

—led by Mary Margaret Halsey.

We met inside the gate at 11 am on Thursday 20th April and were fortunate in having perfect day for our walk.

Our first objective was to locate the gravestone of our past president, Elaine Fisher.  This proved somewhat more difficult than expected, but Catherine finally spotted it.

 

In 2014 Elaine had given a focus talk on "What Matters to Me and Why". She showed many of her photographs, including the pair "Crossing the Street / Returning".  She chose the first of these images to engrave on her gravestone.  Elaine has now crossed the street never to return.  She added a haiku by Kobayashi Issa (Issa="a cup of tea") one of "the Great Four" haiku masters in Japan.

            A lovely thing to see:
            through the paper window's hole,
            the Galaxy

Entering the cemetery was like stepping into another world.  As we proceeded MaryMargaret taught us to listen attentively, to be really present.  I heard the sounds of birds I had never heard before.

One of the first things to take my breath away was this magnificent sugar maple with its tasseled flowers blowing in the breeze.

Many of the trees were still bare while others were covered in blossom and yet others had large leaves.

We were immersed in beauty.

MaryMargaret gathered us together to hear the prologue of Peter Wohl's book, Wild Mind, Wild Heart, a piece called "Sacred Scrolls" by Robert NashuWa, a Passamaqouddy Native American spiritual practitioner.

A final jewel in my time at Mt Auburn was to watch a very rare leucistic, pure white, song sparrow hopping from a garden bed to a bare bush and back again. (Unlike albinism, leucism only affects the color of the feathers not other parts of the body.)

Mt Auburn Cemetery is an inspiring place, an escape from all our worries and cares.  As Lindsa described it, it is a bubble, isolated from the rest of the world.