I’m working on a drawing about the experience of meditation in nature.

The central figure is deep in thought, brow concerned, smile content, and hair blowing in winds of change. The big flowers and tropical leaves represent a flourishing summertime. All creatures take a moment to enjoy and admire the fruitfulness of the earth before the shift into a bustling fall. Leaves swirl into the air and among them a few lost feathers of migratory birds.

The cosmos looks down upon the woman in winter. Cold, misty skies make us withdraw into our houses and into ourselves. That our size and place in the universe is incomprehensible – from the atomic level to the unending fields of our observable universe –  is daunting but awareness allows us to more easily grasp and appreciate our own limited plane of access. Winter in particular can encourage me to reflect – whether I’m stinging from it’s bite or safe inside huddled in warmth.

Dusty clouds clear away and the air fills with cotton seeds as spring emerges. Colorful daffodils, daisies, and dandelions reach up from fresh grasses, and soon the season of reawakening blossoms into a bold hot summer again and again.

It is humbling to remember that the mountains were here long before me and will be long after, they don’t care who I am. Like an eternal heartbeat, broad processes of nature tick along in the background of our blinking lives – maybe they always will and I hope they do despite us.

This is the line drawing in pencil … I like the simplicity of it now, but I will probably render shade and color in Photoshop or acrylic.