I'm Italy Mone, and this is The Slowdown.

A long time ago, I was trying to learn to meditate.

The one thing that worked, the thing that finally allowed me to be still and just breathe,

was simply being physically exhausted.

I could meditate best after a long hike up a hill, on Moon Mountain, or in Shigurloff

Ridge State Park, where a long winding hill brought me to a meadow, where for once my

phone didn't get a signal, and I could see across the other valley.

There, I could imagine how mountains connect us, not divide us.

For a while then, exhausted, empty to all effort, I could sit and practice Mehta, or loving

kindness meditation, or mindfulness to sit and know you are sitting, as Joseph Goldstein

says in his guided meditations.

Then I wondered if it was the meditation that seemed to be working, or just physical exhaustion.

Or was it, which is so often true, the awe of the mountains themselves, the headwaters

of Sonoma Creek, which after the winter rains, is a rush of waterfalls and ripples.

The sound of water even drowns out the sound of my all-too-bullish brain ping-ponging from

one problem to the next.

If I listened close enough, the mountains seem to be saying, we are all doing our best

with this life.

Today's poem by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Haas is a poem that balances the worrisome

long threads of our lives against the large wonder of mountains.

The poem's title also asks us to question who gets to name or claim nature at all.

John Muir, a dream of waterfall, a mountain ash by Robert Haas.

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