The Stanford Inn by the Sea - Eco-Lodge & Retreat Center

A group of international writers who specialize in "green" visited our Inn this week. These were knowledgeable and interesting men and women from England, France, Germany, Holland, Korea, China and Australia. The writer from the U.K. was particularly astute, questioning a statistic I through out from memory which was incorrect. I appreciate critical thinking - challenging inquiry.

What I learned is that much of their work is to identify legitimate green enterprises. Many people are moving toward sustainability - and others simply create a veneer of green. But as I have gone deeply into this, I have learned that what we choose to eat has the greatest impact on the environment and that any "green" action is of little significance - in itself is "green washing" without combines with the effective action of eating a vegan, whole foods diet.

I very much hope that one or more of these writers advocate a truly green lifestyle based on a vegan diet.

Ironically, we go home to go on vacation - we have a "rustic" cottage which hasn't changed much in 103 years, with the last remodeling nearly 40 years ago. For being our only home - in California we live literally in the business - the cottage is not suitable for cold weather - there's no insulation. The water system is not protected and the incoming water from a shallow well is not buried beneath the frost line.

I am writing this from the western shore of Lake Winnipeg during one of the coldest summers in recent memory. The mosquitoes are small and nasty and there are thousands. Summer's heat usually diminishes their habitat and their number. This summer the cool and the rain ensure substantial habitat and numbers.

We spoke to a landmark of a man, Rick Warner, whose mom probably sold this cottage to Joan's parents 44 years ago. Rick manages a variety of summer cottages for their owners and provides security through most of the year the cottages are unoccupied. He always greets us - and a raconteur, tells us about the past 11 months activities.

Yesterday he dropped-in when he saw our van. He told us that one of his friends, a "birder" reports that the migratory birds didn't return to their summer habitats. This report was startling because I had seen either very early arriving or very late departing robins at the inn last week.

Later, yesterday afternoon, I searched for information on the missing migratory water fowl and found that many of the Canadian nesting areas were still snow covered in early June. Returning geese, for example, were nesting a month later. Other birds may not have returned at all. Ornithologists noted that the gestation period and time required for a new generation of birds to mature to a point that they can migrate assure that this year is a breeding season that will not maintain the population of the different species.

While the breeding grounds are covered by snow, ironically global warming's impact is pushing summer nesting areas for many species further north - from just a few miles to hundreds of miles. And then there is the issue of robins at the Inn: Last week, I phoned my aunt from the front gardens of the inn. She lives in Paris, Illinois, a town in southeastern Illinois. She worked for Zenith until she was 75 and is now retired. We were talking about her parrot who she had acquired to grow up with her two girls. In the middle of this conversation, a robin landed in the recently water garden in front of me searching for a late lunch. A robin! In the summer, during the dry months. Usually robins appear in late October, sometimes later, to spend the winter. They are joined by killdeer and a host of other wintering birds. But never have I seen a robin on the Coast in the midst of summer. And he wasn't the only one - I heard at least one other chirping in the bushes.

A summer of bird anomalies - but for us a true vacation - vacating our ordinary concerns to explore: to do things that exposes ourselves to our selves in different ways - if nothing more than thinking about birds.

Pier at Matlock at Dusk

Matlock - It is cooler here this summer than any in recent memory. Unlike last summer, the mosquitoes aren't instantly dehydrated in the sun - too bad for us; good for them. There were no mosquitoes this winter in Mendocino. But there was heat. Some afternoons the temperature in the Stanford Inn's gardens reached 80F or 27C, while the average high is 57F or 14C.

From 1998 to 2008, global average temperature actually dropped and David R. Easterling of NOAA's* National Climatic Data Center and Michael Wehner of the Computational Research Division at the DOE's** Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory warn that such anomalies to the pattern of global warming are just that, anomalies. Other writers claim that the decade long drop in average temperature is 'proof' that the model for global warming is incorrect.

Planetary weather is complex and I am not a climatologist. My perspective has little to do with arguments regarding changes in planetary climate. But thinking about the weather gets me thinking about the nature of change and perception. Perception is awareness of change and a function of consciousness. Consciousness is composed of two phenomenon - that which changes and that which is beyond change and ineffable and therefore far beyond the scope of this writing.

Change: I am aware that temperatures are not what I am used to - it was hot in Mendocino in the winter and cold in Matlock both in the winter and, now, the summer. The climate is changing. I am aware of these changes. If there was no change, I probably would not be aware of climate at all - it would be much like the CMB cosmic microwave background - just "there" - or "here" - wherever that is!

A "thing" related to another "thing" - 80F today, while yesterday it was 50F - this is the content in this movement in consciousness. Awareness of changing averages can become contemplative - and emerges into another experience: Going deeply into this change - into the perception itself, of the comparison allowing me to "know" that today is hotter than yesterday is contemplation. And when I am contemplating the weather, where am I?

Am I here, now, experiencing the warmth, birds chirping, lawnmower humming across the road; the smells of freshly mowed grass and the mustiness of an old cottage? When I am truly listening, smelling, seeing, I no longer know that it is hotter today than yesterday. I don't even know "today" which can only exist in contrast to another day.

Lost in thought, in contemplation, experience is just as lost in the moment as it is when in the I am lost in the senses. But there's a difference. In the latter emerges a sense of something beyond myself. A presence of what some have called the beloved and others, spirit.

Reflecting on this, now, while no longer present in the smell of cut grass, the experience becomes classified and perhaps calcified. But the memory is that the moment was perfect - the robin chirping in the grass, the variety of greens dominating my sight, all of it. And our sense, moving out of this reflection, is to preserve it, to not harm it. And it is the moments of awareness that inform how we eat, the decisions we make regarding the products we use. These decisions are guided by a desire to not harm the beauty of this place, this planet.

Knowing that yesterday was cooler does not have the same power - it is not evocative. There are interpretations and experts and we get lost in the data and debates over their meanings. But there's no debate from the experience of mowed grass, robins chirping.... Try it.

Joan and Jeff

*National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
**Department of Energy

I am sitting in what my kids as teenagers characterized as a dumpy, stinky cottage. It's raining. The kitchen is warm and bright. The phone doesn't work and there's no internet and I am writing this blog in Word to paste it later when the phone lines are whole again.

We were just speaking at the "breakfast table" (almost like "real" folks from a black and white movie from the black and white period before we were born) that some close friends never seem happy. These friends always speak about what is missing in their lives, what they want and usually where they would rather be. And what they want is similar from person to person varying in time and intensity and order -

A sexual partner
A new sexual partner
A new country in which to live and love
A new job
A new home
More money
The return of a loved-on
The opportunity to farm, to ranch, to become a gentleperson farmer
Their own business
To love ("I've smoked (pot) so much that I don't think I can ever love her")
To be loved
in essence
To be where happiness is!

(There's a guy in a yellow rain suit raising himself at the end of boom to our telephone lines. Maybe we will soon have telephone and internet again!)

If I say anything to someone about their transparent unhappiness, I am deemed an authority on happiness and therefore know nothing about their unhappiness. We have the Inn; we have people working for us. We live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and so on. It is interesting - the people about whom I am writing include some in Mendocino, with jobs and apparent job security, surrounded by people who care for and love them.

I can tell you that we didn't start with an inn, employees. We didn't even start at 3rd base, which is code for someone born into money and privilege, I recently learned. Certainly our parents did well, but they weren't privileged. They worked to get where they were. And as far as we know they worried little about their own happiness. Joan's dad was the son of immigrants to Canada and his father was very ill for an extended period and died when her dad was only 15 or 16 with three younger brothers to worry about. Joan's mom had deeper Canadian roots but there was no great prosperity - her dad was a hotel engineer, what we call the head of maintenance at the Inn. My dad immigrated to the United States leaving behind a country and family devastated by the Great Depression. Both of our fathers worked and neither complained about their work. Both of our moms kept their houses and were involved in their communities in volunteer work, in our schools, in social activities such as bridge clubs and in hauling their children from one activity to another.

I know that we worked without concern about whether or not we were happy. We had and have purpose - to live, work and express our spirituality in a single context. In a way our lives are an application of principles gleaned from my years in anthropology. But the last thing that I was concerned with was happiness. There was and is too much to learn, too much to do, too much to live. We wanted our kids to see us work with joy - I wanted work integrated in LIVING. We wanted to help people and providing opportunities for people to express themselves has been a blessing. We have had to deal with ill health of parents, animals, friends - and through all of it we did not dwell on what change would make us happier. It wasn't a focus of any of our thoughts or conversations.

The Chinese concept of "joy" - kuài lè - is a state characterized by inner peace and happiness through appreciating the gifts in our lives. Joy in action is simply embracing our lives. In Western parlance it is "counting one's blessings" - taking stock - and then moving on in life - in living.

I never spoke with my parents regarding "happiness." I didn't talk to them about whether or not they wanted to live in another country - they had been through the Great Depression and WWII and implicitly I understood that they would move within the USA but never leave it. I don't know whether they "loved their lives" but I do know that my mom sought out and enjoyed her friends and my father sought out spiritual teachers and enjoyed his practices.

Back to our unsatisfied friends: I suspect that they do not truly acknowledge and deep;ly appreciate what they already have - embrace it all - as in kuài lè - JOY! Until they do, perhaps they will never truly know what gifts they have and what a gift they are to others. Pining always for something else, for someone else, for some other experience, for some other place, they may never know where they are. They look at the emptiness at the top of the proverbial half full glass and fail to enjoy the water - the elixir of life - in the lower half.

Finally, both Alex and Kate, now in their twenties appreciate the values of cottage life on the western shores of Lake Winnipeg. There's family here and much more - nature is so incredible and present. There's not a square inch that is not a rock or road that doesn't have something growing from it. Manitoba is Joy.