Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay. — Robert Browning
When fall begins, I always feel a tremendous burst of energy. Doesn’t everyone? I give the credit largely to the crisp air and the red, orange and yellow of the trees. It is hard not to feel buzzed on life with so much color surrounding you.
As the season begins to wane, there is a quiet transition between autumn and winter, a small sliver of time when it is neither one nor the other. The colors are muted but no less inspiring. The energy of the season shifts into low gear. While winter sometimes feels to me like a forced respite, the brief resting place at the tail end of fall is a choice, a reward before the season changes.
During a morning yoga class, I found myself looking out at the marsh beyond the huge window in front of me. The tall grasses were weathered and brown, but still moving with enormous grace. I couldn’t help but want to take my camera right into the middle of them. My yoga teacher was talking about the concept of drishti, looking with a soft gaze that is not fully focused, a notion that stayed with me as I went into the marsh later that day.
Steven Hobert’s beautiful new collection of music, “Ocean Eyes,” is available at his website stevenhobert.com and on iTunes. I am grateful for his permission to use an excerpted version of his piano improvisation, “The Plunge,” as soundtrack for my video. Steven says, “the spirit of my vision is to create an authentic expression of passion & play through music and let it sing out into the world.”
The yoga teacher mentioned is one of my favorite instructors, Ryan Kelly. She teaches at both the Marsh and The Yoga Center of Minneapolis. She is also leading an upcoming workshop at the Marsh with Vonda Vaden Bates November 14-16th called “Yoga On & Off the Mat.” While designed for caregivers, the yoga and meditative tools that will be presented in the workshop are applicable to all.