Black Scoters

Photo by Bodhanaa

​

​​I once went to a dream workshop. The teacher said to be on high alert anytime we were traveling; in airports or flying, as we would be more open to synchronistic events. These events may have been foreshadowed while dreaming. This has proven true for me, I have had many serendipitous clues, the bubbling up of buried knowledge, or what I call waking up, on flights and travels. It is as if in traveling we can move between two worlds, or move into possibility, a place we may not normally occupy with everyday logic and tasks. And so my world opened again.

---

I was living in the Pacific Northwest in the early eighties and was flying back after a visit to Michigan. Sitting near the front of the jet, I overheard some snippets of conversation from the seat in front of me. Inside the hum of the jet, children were laughing, then were being soothed. At some point through the enclosed noise, I overheard the word Indianola. Shocked, I leaned forward to hear more, as I was living in the very town called Indianola. It was not a well-known destination. The Kitsap Peninsula itself is not all that accessible. The road through the Peninsula ended in Indianola and then there was water, Puget Sound. The woman was talking about managing a camp there. I was so surprised that I got up and leaned over the airplane seats and told her that I lived in Indianola. The woman said that she and her husband and kids had recently moved there to manage a camp facility. I was surprised again, because I didn’t know a camp even existed in Indianola. Once she described it, however, I knew exactly where it was. It was on the main road closest to the beach that went winding down a hill, then dead-ended at the salt marsh.

Indianola, my home after college. A place of incredible gray beauty, vast loneliness, and uncertainty, of sounds and water and light. Waves crashing and booming, gulls crying and Scoters whoo-whooing. Waves lapping as I walked and walked and walked the beach. A whole new barrage of musky, rich, stinky smells when the tide was out.

Indianola, a beach of quiet people, sits right on Puget Sound. It has just a few streets parallel to the beach, a small general store and a community dock. Some houses sit on a cliff that is gradually falling into the ocean, while the beautiful Madrona trees worked their hardest to keep the land from falling in. On one side, the town gradually ends in a spit, disappearing into the Sound, a small bay, and the Olympic Mountains silhouetted in purple. On the other side, the town and road ends in a saltwater marsh owned by the Suquamish Indians. Looking straight out over the water, Mount Rainier would occasionally appear, hovering, gracing the entire land and sea.

As the camp manager was talking about their new job at Camp Indianola, she said the next event to be held there was a 7 day silent Zen Sesshin. I had never heard the word sesshin, and I have never been known as a silent person, but I was intrigued even more. I had been attracted to Buddhism and meditation since my world religion class in college. I asked many questions about the event and she promised me I could get answers when we got back to Indianola.

As soon as I could, I called and got the details of the sesshin. A sesshin is an intensive zazen meditation practice, and would be done in a retreat format.  It was to be held at the camp, just down the road that followed the cliff up over the beach and then down to the salt marsh, overlooking the Sound. The facilities were right on the beach. A woman I knew was organizing it, and it was open to anyone who wanted to attend. It was as if it had come to me.

I had never done anything like this, I had no idea what Zen Buddhism was about, or meditation  or silence, but as with many other things that had already happened in my life, the minute I heard about it, some inner compass was spinning me in the direction of attending. I have always had the fortune of inner certainty. Sometimes, doubts may come up in my language, but all the quests, adventures, and seeking came from a strong certainty, an inner knowing, the wake up call bubbling up. A certainty that in retrospect has always been part of a spiritual awakening process. I knew I was going and invited my boyfriend, who also agreed to go. I got the details which included special clothes for sitting, special cushions and pads, and overnight gear for six nights.

The traditional cushions and pads used in zazen are called a zafu and zabuton, and are made with kapok, a kind of fiber from a tree. Kapok used to be the filling of those old orange life vests.  Anyway, I found a source of Kapok in Seattle, and after looking up the word zafu and zabuton, set out to make the traditional cushions and pads for us.

It is so interesting to watch my daughter navigate her life through her interests, because I did so much of it in the same way, with a sewing machine. I sat in front of the window that looked out over the water and sky, the Sound, and sewed my way towards the sesshin.

The deep navy zafus and zabutons came out beautiful. They lasted years after that first sesshin ended. They were supposed to be black but I didn’t like black and I was not into conformity. I found dark loose clothing to wear. The prescribed dark clothing and cushions were so as not to have any distraction while meditating.

Finally the evening came when the sesshin was to start. I was so excited! Everything seemed right. I got my dorm assignment, my job, and understood the rules, following all the rules and no talking. Period. My boyfriend also got the rules and decided there were way too many of them and left. I was not deterred.

And so the sesshin began. A teacher of Zen had been brought in. We sat in rows facing the wall. We were given instruction in sitting. The phrase, to sit, meant the practice of meditating. The teacher sat with a keisaku, a flat stick used to help the student’s wakefulness. The student could ask for a whack on the shoulder from the stick, but I was too afraid of that. We sat. We were given instruction on where to put our attention. We counted to ten again and again and again. We sat through my stomach’s continuous rumbling. We sat through stiff legs and achy shoulders. We sat through each other, through time, through sounds. We sat for seven days, and practiced our sitting on breaks for meals, during sleep and while attending to volunteer duties. My job was to help prepare the meals and the tea.

We were served Bancha tea, green tea with roasted brown rice, in Japanese bowls. The smell of the Bancha tea being prepared in the dark of the early morning became my favorite part of the day. At 4am in the dark on Puget Sound, the Scoters would be the first ducks awake, whoooing in the pink and gray of the dawn. Each call lapped over by waves, calling us to wake up, put the tea on, and sit.