I have another bench I adore.
As shared here once before, I “collect” benches, storing them in my mind and heart, dating back to a salty-sea-air-weathered wooden bench, high on a bluff with a postcard-worthy panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean, that I made frequent contemplative use of as a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The sitting assemblage includes a steel bench in San Francisco with a look at The Golden Gate Bridge and another of wood tucked away in a secret cove in Kona, Hawaii, where I watched surfers at play; a green-painted cement bench with a plaque reading “The Drake Seat” at Vista Point on Saint Thomas Island, U.S. Virgin Islands, where Sir Francis Drake is said to have looked down for enemy ships of the Spanish fleet far below; a memorial bench on the Ventura Pier with a nameplate honoring Larry “Coach” Baratte; and a hundred more gems, near and far, where I have sat alone enjoying a quiet moment.
The new bench I have fallen in love with is one I have not experienced in person, but rather saw in a news story. Painted rainbow colors, it graces an elementary playground and has been christened the “Buddy Bench” and here is why: if a child is lonely at recess, he or she sits on it and waits and the other schoolchildren know to come offer an invitation to join them in play.
This simple idea fosters kindness and friendship so well that Buddy Benches are spreading far and wide at pre- and elementary schools, and public playgrounds as well.
Perhaps Buddy Benches for teens and adults would be a good idea, too.
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Speaking of upbeat stories, or “good little news” as reader of this space Judee Hauer calls them, she shared this with me in an email: “Every day we see, hear, sense bad news, but also the little blessings, chirps, colors of how good life is.
“So we need to celebrate the elderly person seen burying a fallen sparrow, digging the small hole with a found branch, covering and talking to the dead creature, marking the spot with a broken piece of asphalt; the house at the corner where somebody has set up two pink plastic chairs at a small table overflowing with 75 mini-animals, inviting a childlike response; smiling eyes under a mask at the doctor’s office; a you-have-the-right-of-way wave…
“There is good right here, right now, all over the place.”
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Coming full circle to column’s beginning, the gorgeous hiking trails in Ventura’s Harmon Canyon Preserve are dotted with a good many lovely benches, and by coincidence – or serendipity – on Earth Day last weekend I came across this quote from John Muir:
“Hiking. I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not hike! Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter’? It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.”
In this hectic, busy, go-go-go world, maybe we all need to remind ourselves to slow down and saunter through our daily lives a little more often – and ask someone sitting on a Buddy Bench if they want to join us.
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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
