Animal Stories

I've been on the hustings to round up a chipmunk (not a chipmonk!) to show you dear nephews - but I am sad to report that the only chipmunk I have found so far was recently deceased - having died of shock from having encountered one of our Temple Cats! The Temple Cats used to be feral and through the kind ministrations of a Temple team including Ani Samla became semi-domesticated, de-sexed and cared for ...but of course cats being cats...continue to chase furry things. So all I have to offer is a picture of a dead chipmunk and guilty looking Temple cats! I will send a picture of a living chipmunk as soon as I get one!!

Other interesting animal sightings for me have been deer - not novel of course to my American family and friends but definitely to the rest of my family and most Australians - although perhaps not New Zealanders, who have deer immigrants there. Anyhow I feel better prepared for deer on the road having had training with watching out for kangaroos on the road - but of course they move differently - and they look remarkably different. Deer definitely have more spots!
I had to drive for the first time late one night to the Temple for a prayer shift recently (we keep a 24 hour prayer vigil) - and I spotted a raised white skunk tail which I drove carefully around - lest the tails' owner spray! Here is a picture of an alive unidentified beetle in the sunflower field I was in last week - just to round off the species range! It's still warm here - sending you some warmth  for the cooler southern climes.

Staying at Noreen's at Susannah Farm

I've decided to shorten Hugarita's name to Hugita (her full name is actually Hugarita Drolma Prasad-Desai and she's from Guyana) - but that's probably too much information. Anyway she will be popping up now and again, like the tree frog she embodies, in my photos - so you get a gold star if you can spot Hugita in the photo - sometimes it will be easier to spot her than others  - and sometimes she will have walked off-stage...to take refreshment in a nearby pond.
So I'm staying at Noreen's whom I met many moons ago in Arizona at Jetsunma's retreat place near the town of Young. Noreen has gone away for a month and asked me to mind her house while she is away. She, and others from my community, live in rental properties situated on a farmlet/tree nursery called 'Susanna Farm Nursery' http://www.susannafarmnursery.com/. I've never seem so many different kinds of pines. It's beautiful and mostly quiet except for the occasional gun-shot (this is the land of hunters) and the sound of planes flying overhead (the 'Farm' is located under the DC Dulles Airport flight path). At least I don't mistake the planes flashing lights at night for Hailey's Comet which I did once - years ago in Beechworth.  And figments of my imagination didn't stop there.There are beautiful fire-flies here at night. Years ago when I was having  night time walk  around the  Migyur Dorje Stupa I deleriously mistook the fireflies luminous green light for wolves eyes in the dark - until I realised the wolf would have to be extremely cross-eyed the way his eyes were moving!

Noreen has a fiesty 90+ year old living in a separate dwelling part of the house. The owner told me the other day the house was pre-civil way which means pre-1861 - so it's very old from an Australian settlement point of view. The State of Maryland supported slavery but because it was so close to the border it straddled both north and southern state opinions - with most residents siding with the Union. Some of the biggest battles of the Civil war occurred in Maryland - and it was a Marylander that shot Abraham Lincoln dead. Here's some inside and outside piccies including a bone-fide ceramic shower head surround -  along with copper piping. Some things were made to last on this property and not, thankfully,  slavery.

And guess what! Noreen kindly lent me her car so I could learn to drive - my heart was in my mouth the first day I drove alone. And it does require some constant thought to work out which way I should be turning my head - but turn my head I do - because that is essential. Fortunately it it is a semi-rural area and I can only drive between 3 points - the town of Poolesville http://www.ci.poolesville.md.us/ - the Temple www.tara.org and Harris Teeter (Supermarket). I've always avoided driving like the plague in America. The thought completely stressed me out - but no-matter - sometimes the only way to learn is to jump in. Pray for me! And everyone else :)

J'Arrive

I arrived in Dulles DC just after midnight on the 9th of July with my friend Jamyang - picked up by our kind friend Noreen (whose house I am now incidentally minding for a month) and taken to a newer friend - Ani Dara - a lovely Nun (twice my height! - well maybe 2/3rds my height) where I'm based. Two weeks after I landed I feel I have finally arrived: gosh I got wacked out by the heat and the time zone reminiscent of when I first arrived in Virginia, America as a 16 year old at the same time of the year - not far from where I am now (in Maryland). My sleeping patterns were topsy-turvy.
Mercifully the flight over was relatively smooth - the first leg I was upgraded amazingly into business class premium. Very comfortable - only one neighbour and heaps of leg room! Otherwise it was a cricked neck from Auckland to San Francisco but again Jamyang, my travelling companion, and I were fortunate as no-one was between us on the flight so again we had more leg room - and then there was the long queue to go through customs at San Francisco but mercifully (there's that word again) not as crowded as LA - and of course I chose the wrong queue - the one where the second customs officer decided to close-up shop - leaving only a one-stop shop for fingerprinting and photographing an eyeball. I selected the queue on the basis that someone was wearing a hobbit t-shirt! Completely poor queue selection criteria.
Anyway the customs officer decided to let me into the country for 6 months. Phewwwwwww. And we also had time to catch our next flight. Which never happened for me in LA. So overall much less stressful so only the transitional zone of adjustment to summer and up-side down time to contend with.
So I'm showing you a number of photos highlighting the above themes
1) Trying unsuccessfully to make friends with the All Blacks at Auckland Airport
2) My impression of what jet-lag looks like in the redemptive field of sunflowers near our Temple
3) My new-old friend Ani Dara - in the beautiful sun-flower fields she took me too - alas the sun-flower field is to attract doves for the dove-hunting season
4) My meditation spot and and 'bed' for the next month. In this picture and others you'll see- popping up now and then my green friend - 'Hug-arita' - complements of Mandy via Oxfam and South America! She has travelled far and is very excited to be back in the Americas!