Driving up to Wilbur last Friday, in hazy sunshine, the spring colours brought to mind one of those Sisley or Pissarro paintings that I enjoyed discovering in my youth. The Capay valley was bright green, and then the highway was studded with redbuds the length of the canyon, the vivid pinks almost shocking.
Even though I arrived in the middle of the afternoon, I could not bring myself to go out for a run right away, but instead relaxed in the pools, where, after dinner, the full moon rose in a smudge of clouds, shimmering in the water.
I slept long and deep, as sometimes happens at Wilbur, and relished the eighty degree weather each day. The meditation sessions were well attended, and a couple of times the discussion gained some real depth, giving me the chance to meet people fully, which is always rewarding.
I did run on Saturday, in the middle of the day, which made for hot work getting up to the ridge. This time I was more worried about rattlesnakes than hunters (though we did hear gunshots the next day), and in the end saw nothing more dangerous than a squirrel. The ridge was also home to many redbuds, a carpet of lupins on the schoolhouse trail, and other flowers I recognise but could not identify.
The next time I visit will be the end of June, when the temperatures will be even higher, and the flora a little less fresh. I am sure I will find it just as restorative.

Almond blossoms on the 505.

The path from the baths to the campsite, which was full along with the rest of Wilbur.

I thought of the title for this post, having been discussing Xuedou’s poems and the similar image from the Genjo Koan with my students, so I thought I should take a picture to match – this is the setting moon on Sunday morning.

First sun on Sunday morning, illuminating the path to the yoga deck where we sit.

First sun at the big pool, which was warm enough to be in at all hours of the day.

It was a quirk of the calendar that I ended up back at Wilbur just two weekends after my last visit. Spring seemed to have hardly moved along at all up there, though the road was now muddy and slippery in several places after the rain through the week. Driving up on Friday I had managed to stay ahead of some of the showers, and much of the heavy traffic – driving towards a rainbow on Highway 80 in the East Bay, and catching the first of the redbuds at the Rumsey end of Cache Creek Canyon just as the heaviest of the downpours hit in the late afternoon.

Saturday was another day of rain and clouds, but Sunday saw a hard frost and clear skies that made it just warm enough to lie out on the deck in the middle of the day. I had reasonable numbers for the sitting including, not for the first time, someone who had sat with me on a previous visit, as well as at least one person who was sitting for the very first time.

As part of the vicarious marathon training, I accompanied my friend on a twelve-mile run on Saturday. The simplest thing seemed to be to run down to the road bridge a mile from the springs, and take a left turn up Bear Valley Road, which seems on the map to continue north indefinitely. I had run a mile or so up it once before, but this time I was in uncharted territory.
After a little rise a couple more miles along, suddenly the valley opened up in front of us, long straight, with beautiful tones of grasses, hills and low clouds. We ran two more miles of a long straight, then the road turned ninety degrees to the left and crossed the valley and the creek to the other side. Where the ninety-degree turn to the right took the road north again, we turned for home, battling weary legs and a slight headwind, happy to be back after a couple of hours work-out to eat and soak. I was a little stiff for my next sitting…

On Monday morning it was 24 degrees as the sun came up and I prepared to leave. I poured hot water on the windows of the car I was borrowing, to melt the ice, something I don’t remember doing since I was a kid in England. One upside was that the mud on the road was frozen solid. Having dropped off the car a couple of hours later, I retrieved my bicycle to get to BART, across the bay, to the Bicycle Coalition to borrow one of their trailers (a perk for members), back home, where I loaded up eight zafu and four goza mats, and rode over to the Embarcadero to set up for the lunch-time sitting.
In the end, no-one joined me this week; this was my first time alone on the cushions, but I have been doing this long enough that I was far from feeling self-conscious. The hour seemed to pass more quickly and more comfortably than often happens. California being as it is, it was warm enough in the city to sit with short sleeves.

Early morning rabbit in front of the red house at Wilbur.

Hard frost on the Bear Valley Road on Monday morning.

When I give zazen instruction, as I did last weekend at Wilbur, I always tell people to notice which leg they put in front (if they are sitting Burmese), or which foot feels easier to have on the thigh (if they are sitting half-lotus), and to switch out to see how it feels on the other side. In the Fukanzazengi, Dogen neglects to suggest this, but contemporary teachers tend to recommend it.

It is always interesting to see the preferences our bodies lean towards, and the asymmetries they can reveal. It doesn’t feel unrelated to me that many years ago I noticed I had a similar bias when I was running, in that I prefered running clockwise circuits (it was not the only reason I didn’t like track running, but it might not have helped). I first became aware of this on a fan-shaped route I used to take from my home in South London to Vauxhall, along the banks of the Thames to Bermondsey and then down to the south – this was in the late eighties and early nineties when the bankside path was not fully fleshed out in the way it is now, and there were some very dark and unused sections in those days, as well as places where you had to come up to the road level instead of being able to stay under the bridges. At first I thought it had to do with following the river downstream, which seemed to help my own flow, but then I noticed the preference come up in other places as well.

At Wilbur, one of my standard runs is up to the medicine wheel, and I did that on Saturday afternoon. Though I have run the route quite a few times now, I have always gone clockwise: up the fire road, and down the Smelter Trail, so this time I was determined to do it the other way. I knew there were a couple of places I would have to pay attention so as not to head the wrong way, but the trail was pretty clear at this time of year. I could also see the notch in the hill I was heading for, which made it easier. Being a trail, some parts of it were steeper than the road, and also, since it was ending up at the same elevation, some parts of it were flatter, so it was a different kind of workout to the more steady climb I am used to. The narrowness of the trail also gave me the illusion of greater speed, a phenomenon I am very aware of both for running and riding – being in a wide open space makes you feel discouraged at your seeming lack of progress. I felt pretty good at the top, and knew I could coast down and enjoy the return. Once thing I did not change though – I always pick up a rock on the way up, to leave at some part of the wheel, and I always circumambulate the wheel, as any sacred spot, clockwise (there is a whole other post I could write about that, and how there are different ideas of how to bow at the altars at Zen Center).

Friday night and morning had been close to freezing, the new moon allowing the stars to appear abundantly, but as the sun rose (and it was high enough above the hillside to shine on the yoga deck for the sitting, which did not happen in January), the temperatures rose to seventy degrees. Later on Saturday, and all the way through to Sunday evening, there was a strong north-westerly wind, much stronger than I am used to here. It even brought a few showers of hailstones on Sunday afternoon, which provided an unexpected soundtrack to the sitting.

After sitting I did my longer run, up to the ridge; since I am accompanying a friend on some of her marathon training runs, I feel I need to keep my own mileage up. Now that I have successfully completed the ridge route three or four times, it does not feel so daunting, but I knew I would also be running into the wind along the spine of the ridge; luckily the hail seemed to have sent the hunters home – we had heard sporadic gunfire as well while we were sitting, and I was poised to blow my whistle loudly if I heard any shots while I was out. This is one route I alternate without much preference – coming from the schoolhouse end, anti-clockwise, as I did on my last visit, the climb to the ridge is harder, but the various undulations on the ridge might be a little better spaced out; coming past the medicine wheel is easier, and after a flat section at the ridge the next slope is steep and fairly relentless. In either case, the views are outstanding; the sun was low, illuminating some slopes, clouds moving by.

There even some early blossoms – redbud on the sheltered side of the hill, and along the ridge, one little shooting star. A wonderful harbinger of spring, which may be further along on my next visit. I awoke early on Monday morning, and as I sat in the outdoor plunge, a celestial shooting star lit up the sky for a moment. Hard to say which is more beautiful.

The moon on Friday evening.

Early morning sun on Saturday