I Am a Tree

I can't believe I never did yoga outside until this week.

It actually began inside. Last Saturday, A and I went to our favorite Saturday morning yoga class, which I never get to go to these days, because S has been working Saturday brunch, which means leaving Saturday morning at 6, so yoga at 8 is out for me. But last Saturday he was working dinner, which means leaving Saturday morning at 10, so I called A at 7:30 and said "let's go," and she had been thinking maybe of staying in bed, but because I was going, she roused herself and we walked briskly in the perfect early morning to the gym, all virtuous and early morning and ready for yoga--and it was the 4th of July weekend (hello? it was the FIRST of July) and classes were cancelled. But there we were, yoga mats, bottles of water, and all, and there was one other deluded would-be yoga student, so we decided to do yoga on our own, which is as unusual for me as yoga outside. We put our mats in a circle--really a triangle--and we took turns leading the others in poses, channeling our yoga teachers, really, but for an hour we did yoga and it was lovely and empowering and everything yoga is meant to be.

On the way home, feeling even more virtuous, A and I discussed how lovely the morning had been, and decided that the next day, Sunday, we would do yoga in her garden. I don't know how the garden came about as part of the plan, except perhaps that it was such a perfect early morning, and so little of this spring and early summer has been perfect, weather-wise that is, and she has done yoga alone in her garden before, and to do it together seemed even better, especially since S would be cooking brunch, which meant that I would not be free, but M and E could play with A's daughter (though as it turned out, M and A's daughter watched a Three Stooges video while E played outside, occasionally coming over to coil herself around one of my poses, which was generally endearing, except when she decided to lie down under me as I was up in Wheel, which was a bit frightening, though she moved immediately when I asked her to).

A has a big garden with vegetables over here and a giant tree in the middle and lots of not-so-mown lawn (because it is the downstairs neighbor's turn, and that is an issue) and over in the back corner a beautiful rock garden with perennials and annuals she had planted the day before, after the communal inside yoga, and a bird bath. We spread our mats in front of the garden and commenced our yoga, taking turns leading the poses. And the thing you need to know about the room where we do yoga at the gym, which is where I do all my yoga, because the point of belonging to the gym, besides the treadmill and elliptical in winter, is that once you belong, all the yoga classes are free--and other classes too, but I am interested only in yoga, when it comes to classes--and if you take three classes a month, your membership is worth it in yoga classes alone, let alone treadmill and elliptical, which are also good in rain, so the gym very much earned its keep until just about a month ago, at any rate, what you need to know about the room where we do yoga is that the floor is terrible: it has a rug over some kind of squishy material and to do Shivasana on it is lovely but to try to balance is horrendous.

But in the garden, on another perfect morning, though not quite so early, and a little warmer, all of a sudden we could balance, and we went up into Tree with hands at heart's center, and then we raised our arms in the air, and we were trees, rooted to the ground and stretching to the sky, and we did not wobble and we did not waver, and I have never balanced so in my life. Afterwards A said that it was because the ground was hard but also bumpy, so it was easy to get a foothold, but I said it was because we were outside, rooted in the ground itself, reaching up to the sky, surrounded by trees, and we were trees, and she thought that was right.

I spent the rest of the week in a house with a deck surrounded by pine trees looking over a lake. Every day I did yoga on the deck, and every day I balanced, like a tree.