reflection | Neal Lemery

By Neal Lemery

(Published in the Tillamook County Pioneer, 11/2/2024)

October seems to have moved in like the frenzied autumn storm of a few nights ago, foreshadowing the arrival of the season. The days and weeks this past month had flown by as the holidays crept up on the calendar. I keep wondering where the time goes these days. Brisk winds are bringing down the colorful leaves, with cooler temperatures compelling me to find my favorite fleece sweater and raincoat, and to renew my wintery ritual of a mug of mid-morning tea.

I’ve barely stashed away the deck furniture and filled up the greenhouse with tender plants when the cache of holiday ornaments catches my eye, reminding me I need to at least think about holiday decorating. Time to get serious about the holiday gift list and plan for all the holiday festivities. I’m still working on the last of the summer’s tomatoes and zucchinis, and have just planted my cover crops for the raised beds. The first frost last week was a rude awakening, a call to action.

Fall is a transition, on many levels, and I’m changing into my seasonal routines of being inside more, watching the lawn green up from the welcome fall rains, and adjusting to the shortening hours of daylight.

What’s been missing in all of this change and transition has been some quiet time, some “me time”.

A few days ago, a big item on my “to do” list was to drive to the airport to pick up a family member. I needed to leave early, when it was still dark out, and was able to enjoy the glories of the beginning of the morning light over the mountains, and the emerging colors of the leaves up the river. It was quiet, without any distractions on the drive, except the interplay of the mist and fog rising against the hills, and the brightening of the full spectrum of fall colors on the trees. A few fishermen were out, reminding me I’ve been remiss in satisfying my needs for streambank solitude and meditating on the sounds of free-flowing rivers, the song of the rain, and the kerplunk of a well cast bait and bobber.

Soon enough, I’d be in the midst of Portland traffic, but for nearly an hour, I had the world to myself, just me and my thoughts and the beauty of this place I am blessed to call home.

My brain mulled over what I had thought were the problems and issues of the week, and I began to realize that what I was worried about, what I had been fretting and stewing about, was really darned inconsequential or simply had a pragmatic and quick solution. It was time to work on being a human being rather than a human doing. My “to do” list really could wait. The day was mine to simply enjoy and to just “be”.

I stopped along the side of the road to visit one of my favorite waterfalls, renewed from the last week of rain. The air was cool, misty, and smelled of damp earth and wet leaves. And there’s nothing like the sounds of falling water in the hills to bring me back to the serenity of nature and the wildness of the forest.

The tension in my shoulders and neck eased, relaxing what tensions I didn’t realize was there, and I felt truly at peace, a feeling that was needed in the hectic pace of the last few months. I took a few deep breaths, clearing out the mental cobwebs, becoming a part of our world, living in the moment, moving into deep peace.

I’d gotten back into the range of a radio station and started to listen to the morning news. The old tensions came back, and I realized I’d rather spend the rest of my trip simply being peaceful, unbothered by the latest news and political rhetoric. It’s not like I needed more information for the upcoming election. The months of increasingly harsh and divisive rhetoric had more than informed my decisions as a voter, and, after all, I had already voted. Indeed, I could be done with all of that. I could take charge and just let go.

“Click” and the radio was silent again, and I rolled down the window for some more forest air and the smell of damp leaves. My world was fresh and clean again, and the strident voices on the radio were quiet. I could think again, able to simply be, to be present in the moment, my brain cleared from harsh words and the manufactured frenzy of political events and commentary. I could focus on the brilliant colors of autumn leaves, and the early morning sunlight on the river. I could choose to have my mind be simply manipulated by the beauty of the morning.

My favorite group of herons were hunting in the upcoming swamp, and I slowed to notice their grace and serenity in the morning light. Soon, I’d be in traffic, finding my way on freeways, gearing up for the congestion of the airport. But, now, I had my peace, and I wasn’t going to let it go. I breathed in, again, bringing that self-contained serenity deep inside of me, holding it close to my heart, and remembering to just be in the moment.

11/1/2024

It was that class we took together, both out of our element. A business class, way outside our academic path, but it was really about what we we both passionate about, human interaction. The psychology major and the political science major, finding the “juice” of our college experience.

Our big assignment for the term was to get together every week, for a day, maybe a weekend, and spend time together, interacting, observing each other. And, most importantly, observing ourselves observing others and how we behaved, inwardly, within a group. We had to write about it all, without any real direction on what the professor wanted, how we were going to be graded.

It was, we agreed, standing outside in the hot evening after our class reunion dinner, the best experience of our undergraduate years, studying how people related with each other, how that really was the gist of becoming a better person, how we used those skills, those observations, in growing our lives, in making a real difference in the world.

We took our experiences together, all those late night conversations, the four years of living on campus during the social upheaval of the Vietnam War years, and went our separate ways. We kept in touch, sharing news of our careers, our marriages, our kids, and how our lives were enriched by what we learned at college, and in navigating our lives in the world.

The best things in our lives, we realized, weren’t the things we thought we’d do, once we graduated and moved on. Life happens, and we used our skills and brains to do unexpected things, growing ourselves and learning even more about life, and who we are.

One of the reunion organizers asked us to ponder whether or not we had changed the world, like we’d all talked about in those late night gatherings, and if we’d made a difference in our lives.

“Yes, indeed,” we answered, but not in the ways we had thought, back in the days of Watergate, and the week we staged a sit-in in the college president’s office, angry at Nixon bombing Cambodia.

The conversations that night were about good relationships, connecting with people, making a difference about how people felt about themselves, how we could make their lives better, simply by being who we were. No one showed their bank statements, their stock portfolios, their photos of their real estate or talked about their job titles, or the cars we drove to get here that night. We didn’t wear any fancy clothes. We laughed at the photos of our days on campus, the wild hair, how much beer we could drink back then, and the times when Angela Davis and Anais Nin spoke on campus.

We talked about the people we had become, how that one class, that one professor made all the difference to us as we went on about our lives, how we became better people, how forty years gives you a perspective on life and the world that we may not have had back during our days as eager, curious college students. And, who we are today is still about who we were then, curious, looking inward, and figuring out how we can connect with someone, and change their lives.

—Neal Lemery 6/27/15