Earth Day retreat

I spent the weekend at Ocean Shores on a yoga retreat for Earth Day. It was a wonderful weekend of fabulous food, longs walks on the beach, good conversation and of course, deep yoga sessions. I carpooled with 3 other women, 2 of whom I had met on a previous retreat and 1 I was meeting for the first time.

As we drove we experienced more types of weather than one usually would in a month -- hail, rain, bright sun, snow and sleet all took turns at the car's windshield. Driving home from yoga class on Monday I jotted down some lines about the last few weeks:

Spring is confused this year
white snow, snow white cherry blossoms
toss in the wind, mixing
folding fleece pants on a seventy-degree Saturday
shorts sitting forlorn in a Monday hailstorm
I strive for patience
yet I yearn to break from winter's closed door
into the unfurling
Spring

On the beach we had incredible luck with some sunshine and migrating shore birds. Our resident biologist, Brent, told us that the group we saw was likely 4 or 5000 in total.
Their dance was too beautiful to capture with still photography, but you can get a sense of the size of the group.
The birds had amazing movement, and rarely showed the kind of chaos you can see here.At one point in our walk we saw what must have been the hot spot for perch. I didn't want to bother the fishermen for a photo, but some of them had a net they wore in their waistband for the fish they had caught.Overall, it was a great way to spend some time re-connecting with nature and thinking about Earth Day. The drive home was difficult, both because I was anxious to be home and see my family, and also because I was sad the retreat had come to a close. It is not often enough that I can leave behind thoughts of work, chores, and all things electronic and walk on the beach for hours.

So when I pulled up in front of my house, full of good thoughts of green living, I was surprised to find an incredibly enormous vehicle parked on the street. I had not seen one of this make before, and found the name to be fitting:


Such a good name for something will use the same amount of gas as an entire fleet of normal cars.