As close to first thing every morning as I can, I record the temperature, the wind speed and direction at home. I note the time. But first I look at the Grand Canyon cams. Looking at the Grand Canyon images is the first order of my heart. But it is not always the first order of business when I sit at my desk. Detritus emails, those that I have invited into my inbox, and renegades, those that found their way into my inbox uninvited, might pull my attention. I don’t like that. I may knock off a few that I know I’m not going to read. Do not ask me why I invite that which I do not want to engage in. I do. This is not unusual. But as I get older it is more important to stop this from taking up my time. I unsubscribe when I can no longer deny that I just don’t want to spend the time reading them. Perhaps, I have chosen to be less greedy. 

~ ~ ~ 

 The Grand Canyon cams are only static views. One view is from Kolb Studio. That view, along the rim by the Bright Angel Trailhead, is a well-known stop for visitors. Another cam is focused on the head of the Bright Angel Trail itself. Sometimes, because the cam refresh is staggered, it seems like I see people moving, either coming up from the canyon or heading down the trail. The third cam is at Yavapai Point looking northwest. This cam is located at the Geology Museum—which I’ve visited a number of times. 

~ ~ ~ 

Something opened in me when I first saw the Canyon. I wonder if it’s like what they say about dawn and dusk, that it’s a brief window into other worlds. My first view felt like that. I was just a visitor. The peoples that live and lived there for generations must know the Canyon as family—a relationship with a different kind of time, even a different kind of gravity.

~ ~ ~ 

I’m an East Coast person.  Big skies and expanses of the Western world were fairly new to me until late in life. By my first visit to the Canyon, I had already been out West a few times. Even so, the Grand Canyon had an impact that holds me to this day. My tears flowed that first time. They just flowed. On my third trip, I met an older man from Mexico. (By then I had started checking the cams daily when back home in Jersey.) We were at a viewing area along the road to Desert View Tower. That’s a long stretch from the Canyon’s main visitor center. Every stop along the way allows you to breathe in the impossible beauty. I was separated from my niece and nephew, and his family was ahead of him, closer to the rim. I happened to catch sight of him just as he stopped to take it all in. And then I saw his tears. I went closer to him so that I could put my hand on his shoulder. And when I did, once again I felt that feeling when I first saw the Canyon. I was so grateful. 

~ ~ ~ 

The second part of my daily ritual: I check my local temperature, winds and their speed. I do not know why I do this. But I have been doing it for many years. And should I forget, or should something keep me from coming to my desk first thing in the morning, I am still compelled to note them when I finally get to sit at my desk. I’ll follow through as I always do then and check the Grand Canyon cams. When I am late, the canyon views are different than I’d hope to see. They don’t feel as intimate as in the early morning. But the three-hour time difference between Jersey and Arizona does give me some leeway to catch them even when I am late. Anytime I look, I can’t stop myself from saying, “Hello” or “I’m late today. Hello beautiful.” 

~ ~ ~ 

I was raised with the love of laughter and foods, and without rituals of any sort. I knew nothing about nature except that every summer we went to the shore. And that’s what we called it, the shore. I was very fortunate. And I am today as well because I live at the shore these days. What I called shore then is actually a town called Bradley Beach. I live very near there. 

For as long as I can remember, desire pulled me in just like the tides in the ocean. And now I live through all the seasons here. In ways I might be aware of at times, and forget at others, the seasons are a way of knowing without knowing, a ritual of experience and expectations. With climate change (the word ‘change’ pales in description from the reality of my experience), I find here, too, that something opens in me with each returning season. 

~ ~ ~ 

Shark River is just down Snake Hill from my house. It has become the center in a world I now call family. I never thought of family as the world until my mother died. It was then that I realized I saw the river, the ocean, the birds, especially the osprey, as kin. 

~ ~ ~ 

I am a child of Friday night chicken soup. With dill. Every Friday. One day after my ma died, I came upon dill in the produce aisle. I wasn’t looking to make chicken soup. But when I saw it, I inspected one bunch after another searching for the freshest, most vibrant. I held it to my nose and inhaled. It was the first time in too long that I felt my mother’s presence. Now, I can hardly pass by dill in the produce aisle without doing the same. Dill’s aroma is a road to my ma. 

~ ~ ~ 

There is a picture of my mother in my dining room. She’s wearing a brand-new outfit. Yellow cotton pants and a white and yellow checkered, sleeveless top. She’s holding a long blouse over her shoulder with one finger like they might do in a Hollywood photo from her younger days. My mom had just come back over the edge of leukemia. She was feeling good, looking good, and life was calling her. She was about to head back home to Miami Beach after staying with me through the rough part of her early diagnosis, while we went through the worst of it and didn’t know how it would come out. Well, it came out OK for a while. She looked as sharp as I’d ever seen her when she sported this outfit. New duds, all smiles. 

~ ~ ~ 

Every day I note the conditions at home and the view of the Grand Canyon. And every morning, as I pass through the dining room to put the tea kettle up, I touch my mother’s belly in that picture. I go., “Hi, Ma.” Then I move into my day.

~ ~ ~ 

There is a river in Russia called the Lena River. That was my mom’s name. Her parents were from Russia. That’s all I know of their history. My family cared nothing for the old. We have one story from Russia and that is how my mother’s father came here. My ma started here on the East Coast, and so did I.  Without ceremony or ritual, I grew up learning about the seasons from the foods she made. My family is Jewish. Except for my father’s father, we were never religious. On my mother’s side, special meals, one of which was always Passover but without the traditional rituals, was our way to commune. Our stomachs and noses were our guides.  I still remember the smell of the dirt I played in by my grandfather’s house, where I lived on Johnson Avenue in Newark, as much as I remember my mother’s chicken soup. 

~ ~ ~ 

The little girl that longed to be by the ocean because it meant free-form days, summer, and no school—that was me. Still is me. I can smell the ocean from far away. Miles and miles and miles. Today, I know just where that spot is when I first smelled how close I was to the ocean. It’s a good five miles away. I couldn’t wait to get there then. I still can’t. 

~ ~ ~ 

Since living here, Shark River has become an integral part of my life. Every visit to what I call the wetlands, what the town calls a parking lot, I hope to see what birds are there. Osprey, sometimes called water dragons, have become my favorite. During the seven or eight months that the osprey and I have together, I also expect to see the eagle because it resides along the river all year long. I once saw an osprey and eagle so close together that I could hear their wings touching. The eagle was trying to steal the osprey’s fish. The osprey retained possession and flew to its cell tower. The eagle returned to its nest across the river, high in the tree canopy. For a while, they were just twelve or so feet above my head. I can still hear their wings rustling in my memory. 

~ ~ ~ 

In some ways you might say that I’m tethered to the river. As I’m walking up to the bulwarks, I’m aware of the winds, the quality of the air, the temperature, whether the sun is out or if, through the clouds, shadows are painting the river. I like to listen to the wind talk to the river.  When they’re really chattering, there are a lot of ripples. And when they’re just hanging, holding the quiet, the surface is smooth, mirroring the entire back end of the river. I get to see the sky and the river in one view. The part of the river where I like to visit narrows to a small run under the local bridge, then moves past that heading under the local highway into otter territory. 

~ ~ ~ 

That’s my river. Sounds possessive but I’m talking love, family, pride. This river’s real name is Nolletquesset, the Lenape name for Land of Good. The good of this river extends to first and second-generation people like my mother and myself. In the summers before I knew my river, my mother was called to go for a walk to get clams on the half shell in Asbury Park. She walked all the way from Bradley Beach to Asbury. Unheard of. And so, I tagged along, excited to be her companion. This walk was before people carried water in bottles, before walking or running was a thing. My mom was a child of the city, where you never had to walk very far to get to anything you wanted. But in the summer, if you wanted clams you had to walk a distance. And she did, because she too was drawn by the salty brine. 

~ ~ ~ 

There are only a few places along the Grand Canyon’s rim trail where you can see the ribbon of water about a mile down from you, the famed Colorado River. From that height it looks like a wavy line. But it is unlike any other line you see at the Canyon. It meanders. Much of life and the living meander. That kind of movement, sometimes called a wiggle waggle, like the language of bees, is the choreography of dragons and rivers. I like that rivers are also called water dragons. Born from our mothers, we all meandered into life. I don’t know if my mother’s parents knew the Lena River. But I take it as a good sign that she shares the same name. Every day that I touch her belly, and note the temperature, the wind speed and direction, I am meandering through my day.

~ ~ ~ 

I never knew my mother’s mother. But this I know. She made chicken soup with dill every Friday night, too. My mother was steeped in dill, as I was. I was going to tell you that I haven’t come from a tradition and I haven’t adopted one either. The truth is that I’ve come to be called by the winds and the temperature and the smell of the ocean. And since my mother died, to this day, dill calls to me.

~ ~ ~ 

What distinguishes ritual from ordinary time? Sometimes it seems as simple as stepping away from routine. And sometimes routine is the ritual. For me, the proviso for the latter would be that the routine focuses beyond the must-dos and the distractions. For me, ritual is now a practice. The gravity and security of repetition is essential to anchor me as I dwell in a sphere of curiosity, taking field notes for my soul. 

~ ~ ~ 

My ritual, connected to land and water far and near, is a composite. I did not inherit any rituals. And I did not adopt any. But along the way, somehow, different elements from the outside and within my home came together as I came through time. While paying homage to my family’s wandering Jew status, I’ve been in relationship with the land around me. It was not until my now-lifelong relationship with a woman, that I found my way to gardening and what we call our controlled wildness. We do not have children. I hardly have any family left. But the meanders we have flowed into have embraced us. 

~ ~ ~ 

A recent summer night I was at a concert. A New Jersey Pine Barrens group played in my county. The base notes touched the deep parts of my heart and arrested my attention. The bass player was almost as tall as his instrument. He was in the back. It was hard to see him. But the sounds that he made reverberated within me.  It had me wondering, what is the base note in my ritual? Is it my mom and her passing? Is it the wind? I always thought it was. I wonder if the base note is the Canyon or my river or the salty air. Is it possible that the direction of the wind influences me? For I’m sure that my soul knows east and everything and everywhere in relation to it—the Canyon, my river, my mother’s belly—every morning, every day.