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Cheryl Wilfong

Biography
Life began at 40 for Cheryl Wilfong when she quit her day job to follow her bliss and research and write Following the Nez Perce Trail an historical guide to the Nee-Me-Poo National Historic Trail. (2nd edition published in 2006).

She has been a regular in Jan Frazier’s weekly writing groups since 1998 and prints a booklet of collected essays for friends every year at Christmas. She reads her writing once a month when she gives a Dharma talk at Vermont Insight Meditation Center.

Cheryl will soon self-publish The Meditative Gardener: Cultivating Mindfulness of Body, Feelings,and Mind.

• Visit Cheryl Wilfong's blog at www.themeditativegardener.blogspot.com
  

A Dog's Yard

My friend’s yard is a dog’s yard, a place to roll in the grass, dig in the dirt, walk in a small circle and lie down. Previously I would have said it was a dog of a yard as my mind busied itself with weeding what may once have been an herb garden. My gardening mind has its own opinion about the unkempt ladies bedstraw creeping out of what used to be a flower bed.

sMy mind would have pulled sheep sorrel, horsetail, and red clover. My mind raked up the dog turds lying about the lawn and pulled tufts of grass and plantain out of the cracks between the stones on the terrace.

I look at my limping friend, she’s a retired teacher and now a dog breeder. She’s content with her view of the valley and the hills beyond, the nearby woods and fields with strawberry children tended by a neighboring farmer growing under row covers.
Hush. Listen to the grasshoppers and the meadowlarks.