Going to consult the creek

 When the Taoist sages would go on a retreat, they would say they were going to consult the mountain. Whatever else you could say of the experience, it was engrossing.

Just so, I go to consult the creek.

I was walking down the south bank where there are several kinds of reeds, which you can distinguish from sedges by feel. You can, by running your hand over the culm, or long main stalk of the plant, tell whether it’s triangular, and thus a sedge, or round, and thus a reed.

The saying is: “Sedges have edges, while reeds are round.”

I was trying to see the difference, rather than feel it, to find the small details that would allow me to tell, from across the creek, what I was looking at.

Before I knew it, the walk was over.

It’s possible, while going on a walk, to think about profound questions. But when I do that, the reeds and sedges disappear. I’m distracted, thinking of something else, something Plato said or Hume contended. I don’t see the swallows feeding over the lake or hear the mockingbirds fussing.

Conversely, if I am walking around the creek looking at rushes and sedges, I’m incapable of thinking about philosophers and their questions.

In trying to describe it, the best I can do is say: My mind doesn’t go blank. It becomes still in an odd way.

For the moment, it doesn’t concern itself with anything else. It’s not concerned about the pandemic or the tragedy of the political situation. It’s concerned about a pocket of sedges next to a stand of cattails.