Five Summer Weeks in Oregon

In the summer of 2019, my brother and sister-in-law left a small town in northeastern Massachusetts to travel to southwestern Oregon and one of its largest cities. An uncle there, who had extensive plans to travel, had asked his niece if, beginning in July, she and her husband would like to spend five weeks at his home as dog-sitters for Budda. It was a well-timed request. Their pets, Harry-dog and Misty Duck cat, had both passed, and my brother and sister-in-law were free to travel. They took Budda everywhere, even to the coastal beach that was two-and-a-half-hours west of the rugged Klamath Mountains, while the uncle's home was east of them.

During their July visit, I was in residence in mid-central India at Meherabad.* When my brother's photos began arriving, the more he sent, the more I lived with their anticipation and then their travels. One photo was taken from the top of the uncle’s driveway. Dense trees can be seen across the valley, the trees being interrupted only by the belt of the town, and farther on where the varying grays distinguish unending mountains. Closer, at the outer edge of the driveway, Budda is seen sniffing the short, dry grass that is edged by tan and rust-colored leaves. On either side of the dirt drive, two trees tilt toward one another, the tips of their leaves barely touching to frame a blue sky.

In another photo, my brother pauses his walk on a narrow downhill road to look at small white flowers. Looking beyond them, I see scattered, flat-topped stones on light brown dirt. He walks toward mountain peaks—farther away than the row of fir trees ahead—that, shaped as a V, descend to an intersection in the road.

In another photo, I see my sister-in-law’s artist tools on a cloth on the rough ground, while from another photo, I learn that on other days, she puts them on a table. That’s why in a photo with wonderful painterly potential, I am confidently certain that though my sister-in-law is not in it, she is seated nearby on a chair, or on the ground, with her drawing pad on her lap.

As I steadily received these photos, there came a turning point when I changed from a viewer into a participant. In my imagination, I was in southwestern Oregon with them, and I began writing!

One

The abrupt and massive stone juts seem epic as the dominant

character against which the ocean, at low tide, makes a long run

toward the tree population. Always failing then retreating, without

having learned its lesson... it’s an act made in effort, not in conquest.

The woman, so small against the ocean she can see but cannot measure,

silently acknowledges the greatness she stands before, barefooted,

in unblinking reverence.

Two

Inner quiet
Outer quiet
How necessary nature is...
An opening into a world of leaves—a country of light
and rain, selectively received on the floor of the woods.
I walk there.
I could walk there in a time of touching... leaf by leaf
and bark, and breathing in...
deeply.
Such breathing in
of woodsy smells,
a sign to bow before for truth

Three

And I,
with walking stick,
hat, and backpack—for a few
essentials...
I came to know the land and water as never before
as its privacy was opened to me... and in my reflecting,
I found God had sent an experience that swelled
my awareness of my soul.

Four
Each afternoon, I passed the woman in the red
top, but she never noticed, as her back was to me.
But I noticed.
Each day all that she brought was placed

at the same location.
As if the land she shared with the dried and flattened

grasses was in a room of her home.
Perhaps it was.
Perhaps the sky, that I noted as blue, was blue because

she had painted it.

My realization is, "By imagination, we may experience where others have been, and newly discover ourselves."

* Meherabad. The site of Avatar Meher Baba's Tomb-Shrine (Samadhi) and site of world pilgrimage as well as His early primary residence, ashram, and headquarters of His activities until 1944; now overseen by the Meherabad Trust.