If you want to know what it feels like to be a Buddhist nun and to go camping with 30 other siblings, this is for you! We traveled from Deer Park to Yosemite valley: 4 vans and a truck, 8 hours driving and numerous bathroom stops, thanks to the sisters!
DAY 1, April 24th.
Gosh, what a trip to get here. I saw nice things on the way.
We arrived at the camp site without losing anyone: all are here.
Sr. Hanh N. and I sing the latest version of “The Three Refuges” in the car.
We’re all excited by the view, and the trees…
A brother looked at me as I was getting out of the car and said ‘Hey, sis! You ready to put up the sisters’ tents?!’ I looked around me and realized that no other sister knew how these tents work! The sisters kept on moving them around – not quite sure about where they wanted to sleep: under this cedar tree or this one? I made a solemn declaration: “Sisters, while you make up your minds I’ll go visit the nun’s room…” And it worked: they made up their minds. They chose this cedar tree. It’s special. It’s THE cedar tree of their hearts.
All right, this is the funniest story:
I opened a bag, unfolded the tent and then noticed a sharp scent in the air. I thought, ‘The brothers who used it before us didn’t clean it before folding it!’ Or maybe they folded it in the rain ‘cause it smells like ‘anything else in the entire world.’
I put up the tent while practicing with the exquisite fragrance, in - out, in - out… I’m OK. No headache.
Then my sister gives me a little broom to sweep the tent. She then cleans the floor with sanitized wipes. And together we clean up the tent. Mindfulness is here, I promise.
Then chaos started.
My sister starts screaming mindfully: she found a dead lizard in a pocket of the tent. At the same time sr. Hanh N. calls me, from outside, by my nickname ‘Sister Hood’, and keeps on telling me to get out of the tent because there’s a mama bear with 2 cubs passing by (by the way, some sisters don’t call them ‘cute cubs’ but ‘cubes.’)
So here I am, the little Frenchie nun, trying to put up this tent, smudging herself and the tent with sage to change its fragrance and Sr. Hanh N. comes back and declares “Dude! You must have been really concentrated, in a real samadhi, ‘cause I kept on calling you and you wouldn’t come!”. I’m busy doing ‘nun things’: I’m breathing - I’m arriving at Yosemite Park…
We are camping and I see sisters pass by with suitcases.
One asks me if we can cook potatoes in the microwave; I asked her, innocently, if she brought the microwave with her to the camp site. She says no.
Then almost everyone asks where the showers are. I found out that there are none.
Alleluia.
Camping.
Already sounds fun.
I looked at Hanh N. and we laughed as we crawled into our fragrant tent, thinking of no showers for a week, the suitcases, the bears and the thousands-of-stars hotel. From then on, I call Hanh N. “Sr. Bear”…
The brothers are trying to make a fire with wet wood, ‘It’s gonna work, just wait a bit. It’s gonna work’
Now imagine all that with bluegrass music behind.
Some people who drove all the way from Mississippi come and ask questions: they’re curious about us… What’s this bunch of Asian bald people with brown robes and PJ’s? Oh!!! You’re monks and nuns?!
Can you feel it? It’s DP in vacations, it’s only the beginning.
DAY 2, April 25th.
Woke up with the Joni Mitchell song ‘Chelsea morning’ in mind.
Thinking of changing the words for something that sounds more monastic and fun.
I slept in 4 blankets. Woke up in the middle of the night stuck in a blanket sandwich. I couldn’t move. Sr. Bear snores like a ‘little’ train. Someone said it could snow up here so we took blankets, but we took so many that we could host a whole troop twice our number.
The sisters got ‘bear bells’. They are, in fact, Christmas bells. Some sisters are so scared of bears (“Last year, we went to Sequoia Park and a bear came in a sister’s room, while she was eating!”) So the thing is they all put the little bell on their backpacks, and when you have 20 sisters walking, each with a bell, it’s loud. Sometimes they have fun shaking their backpacks, like they’re dancing, just to make sure everyone can hear it.
Birds fly away, and brothers too because they’re so annoyed by the noise. One said as we cross a bridge ‘OK, you sisters walk on the right side, and we’ll walk on the left side!’ As if people wouldn’t already understand that we’re from a monastery…
We hiked our first real hike. And sat by a waterfall, and got drenched by its mist.
The brothers and I giggle as the water drips on our faces and hearts. We are all so happy to see the water falling from the top of the mountain to a place below that is all ice and snow, then running below to another fall… everything is cycle. The cloud is right above the fall.
On the way back we have a snowball fight.
I’m enjoying myself so much. I hadn’t yet gone to any place like this since I became a nun.
I used to go canoeing every summer. We would go for a week and sleep on the river banks. You only pack what you need (no suitcase) and live on the water, sometimes you sleep in the canoe. Then we would go horse-riding for a couple of days, and rock climbing.
I crossed so many brooks and looked at so many cedar trees. It’s amazing to finally meet the tree of which my guitar is made, as well as my drum. I’m so grateful I got these gifts from the Earth. It’s not just about getting possessions but feeling that something is given from the Earth, and that I have to learn to honor them.
My first incense cedar trees.
And the hike. Woohoo, that was a trip!
We found out where the showers are. What a relief!
DAY 3, April 26th.
Woke up with the Joni Mitchell ‘Both Sides, Now’ song, in mind.
‘I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, but still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds… at all.’
Gosh such a hike.
Had lunch by a river bank, at the foot of Vernal Falls. Played with squirrels.
Went through snow and snow and a little mud. And I saw trees, trees and trees. And trees?
And a couple of brothers and very few sisters.
Sister Bear is behind, she’s making fun of me sometimes, calling me Sister Hood.
Then after lunch, a nap, and we head for another part of the hike.
Walked on the east side of the mountain, in full sun. Pretty hot.
Arrived above Nevada Falls (Nevada Falls aren’t in Nevada, as if we could hike that far!).
Once I was up there I realized that it’s my father’s birthday. He would have been 49 if he was still alive.
I couldn’t help but smile and say ‘Joyeux Anniversaire, Papa’ and just take a sip of the view we have from up there. If you’re not careful, you could get drunk with the beauty and all dizzy with joy.
For my father’s 49th birthday I climbed a mountain and simply let the beauty heal his heart. Mine too.
My father and his father too.
Sister Bear and I are goofing again. We see the river flowing and want to put our feet in the water. We rush, remove our shoes and run in the water.
And guess what?
The water is so cold. I mean really cold, it’s melted snow. And we almost get cramps in our feet.
But we laugh and laugh like 2 (big) kids.
We’re so free. Others laugh as well when they see us playing. You wouldn’t guess she’s 27 and I’m 25.
And we laugh and joke and laugh.
I still remember Sr. Bear’s smile: we’re trying to take pictures of ourselves in the water, but the water is so cold.
Then we come down the Mist Trail. I get drenched, see rainbows.
The place seems so magical, the water so pure. It really does clean one’s soul.
The water drops from my robe. In my family we say that water has the power of reconciliation.
It reminds me of the Dharma Rain. Water cools the flames of the heart. It teaches humility, the gesture of bending to the ground, reaching to deep places within simply because it flows.
I’m grateful I got to hear that as a kid: water brings reconciliation. It washes away your sins and it does cool the flames of passion. I also remember the day I ordained and the moment Thay poured the Nectar of Compassion on my head – on my long hair. All his sons and daughters get it.
DAY 4, April 27th.
I’m tired. I want to sleep, sleep and sleep.
Woke up with puffy eyes. Slept on a headache. Sr. Bear saw me through the blankets and shined a real wide smile. She greeted me with ‘Good morning, Sister Hood!’ and I answered ‘Good morning, Sister Bear.’ Got up, made my way to the bathroom, wishing I could have a hot bath.
Found feathers. I spent a little time watching baby crows and the way they fly.
I realize I’m really tired because I don’t even know what I’m saying or thinking. Took vitamins and a good cup of tea to brighten my day.
Went for a ‘flat’ hike. Meaning we didn’t climb anything.
Saw trees and heard the native story of the 2 mountains that face each other.
It’s the story of a man and a woman who loved each other very much (it always starts like that!). But the man was from a Western tribe, in Yosemite Vallew, and the woman from an Eastern tribe, near Mono Lake. One day, after their marriage in the woman’s native land, as they traveled over the mountains to Yosemite Valley (if I remember well) the woman became sad and wanted to go home. The man said that he could not live in a barren place that had no acorns to eat. Apparently, the cultural differences got them into a conflict and she left him to go back. It’s always the woman who gets angry.
I don’t remember the whole story, but the woman became a mountain (the Half Dome) and the man became the other mountain (North Dome.) And even today we can see them crying for one another. You may check the story, I don’t remember it well.
Of course a sister says, “When there are cultural differences, like in our Sangha, we have to be careful not to become stones to one another”. It makes sense, but it’s so hard. Especially when you live as a minority and rarely speak your native language. Sometimes, this whole experience of being a minority brings you to a place where you have to humble yourself. And if you don’t want to, life will bring you to this place, and don’t expect it to be gentle. If you’re in pain for any reason, gratitude towards others and the conditions that make you alive is the remedy. If you have no gratitude, you can’t survive.
Life isn’t easier for monastics. We face challenges that are sometimes really demanding.
But we won’t say that life as a layperson is easier. It has its challenges too.
And I’m not the one who will pretend that laypeople have less happiness than monastics.
I think it’s a matter of how you handle your daily life, just like us in Brown Robes.
DAY 5, April 28th.
Leaving Yosemite Park to spend the day and night in a nearby camp.
We go to hike in a Sequoia grove.
I saw and hugged my first Sequoia. And I felt such healing.
I hope all the other kids, still caught in Paris, can experience this feeling: dreams becoming true.
This trip to Yosemite is such a gift to me. See: I’m French and I grew up in Paris’ suburbs. I know about rocks and trees. But I surely know more about buildings, streets and asphalt… to be surrounded by so many trees and mountains is magical and so healing… it’s a gift. And I wish all kids may have the opportunity, enough merits, to receive a gift like this one.
DAY 6, April 29th.
All right.
I slept in the car last night. Woke up in the morning and vaguely remembered a dream: I was looking for dancing shoes, the same kind I wore when I was 6. Some kind of modern jazz ‘sleepers’ that I wore until my teacher asked me if I was interested in entering ballet school. Apparently, I was talented and she wanted to help me start a career. However, when I found out I had to wear pink instead of the dark green color I wore, I refused. There was no way I would wear pink.
That was it with my dancing career, because I couldn’t be pink: I wanted to be green.
Instead I became a nun and wear brown now.
I’m a brownie, part of the brown family.
I woke up a couple of times at night to see the stars through the windows. I was so amazed by their clarity. I could hear the sound of the river, wishing we had a canoe. It almost felt like they were chanting. So sweet.
Saw a goose and pretty birds. The water of the river is rising.
We drive home and I make it to the shower block. I’m sleepy, tired, stinky and sticky.
Go to bed, sweet dreams.
After this trip, I feel so new.
Everything feels so new and somehow different…
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