Do you believe is signs? I'm starting to. I had heard at class on Thursday there would be a sunrise yoga gathering this morning at the wharf in Leonardtown and resolved to attend same. Although the morning was beautiful, I wasn't entirely in the mood when I started out. As I turned out of our development onto the main highway, I noticed from the corner of my eye, standing in the field across the way, what I first thought was a vulture. A second look revealed that this particular vulture had a pure white head and a large hooked beak. It was a fully grown, mature bald eagle, just standing in the field about 20 yards off the road. I'm not sure why, but I have for a long time had an affinity and what feels like a connection to these birds. They are almost my totem. I pulled over on the shoulder opposite the bird and watched. He did not move, so I got out of the car to make sure he was alright, thinking I would call Natural Services if some yahoo had shot it. Nope. It saw me walking towards it, looked a little pissed off and indignant (bald eagles are good at that), and flapped away into some nearby pines. I swear the tail looked about 2 1/2 feet across.
Got down to the wharf where a crowd was just beginning to gather. (The folks in the adjacent picture were not in the class, this is just a picture of the wharf I lifted from the web. Also, you can't see the incredible view of Breton Bay that is afforded here.) A great blue heron flew overhead, landed in the nearby mud flats, and began probing for breakfast. Red-wing blackbirds declared the edges of their territories from the cat-tails. People began to arrange their mats radially around the flagpole in the middle. With practically the whole area to choose from, I of course put my mat in a spot where I would be looking into the sun. My friend Tracy was teaching today, and there were about five other teachers moving around correcting postures and helping out. The cost for the class was a donation to the local soup kitchen. As we got closer and closer to the 7:30 start time, more and more people streamed in. By the time all was said and done, there were over 65 people at the class. We spilled out of the 'compass rose' you see in the picture; people filling the walkways leading up to the center. There's no electricity at the wharf, so unlike most classes, there was no music. Instead the background 'music' to Tracy's teaching was the songs of birds and the splash of fish jumping. The temperature was perfect, there was a cool breeze blowing to keep the bugs down, the sky was blue with just a few puffies, and Tracy taught a really great class. There were folks of all levels and ages, including several people for whom this was their first yoga experience. After the class, I told Tracy that in some ways I felt sorry for the 'new folks', because I believe taken together this was the single best yoga experience I've ever had.
One more sign: while waiting for class to start, I was talking to a fellow student when someone said, "Hey Tim, you have a passenger." There was a beautiful orange and black butterfly that decided that where it needed to be was on my feet. It kept flying away and returning, landing on my arch or my ankle over and over again. It didn't leave until we finally started getting active on the mat.
It was a good morning.
That said, I have three more pills to take until I'm through with my current chemotherapy. 15 more milligrams of Revlimid. When I'm done, that will have been 21 pills times 5 mg/pill times 6 cycles. 630 milligrams of Revlimid. That's a little over 2 hundredths of an ounce. And it might just drive my CLL into remission. Small miracles. I go back in a couple of weeks for another (yawn) bone marrow biopsy, then we start monitoring. Hopefully, I'll see another bald eagle on my way to the biopsy.
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