Twenty-one days ago I received a soul-jolt, a rattling, a kind of wake-up call from within. Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime, or maybe not, we’ll see, but I bet you know what I mean. My mind, heart, and body sent out a call I could not ignore. Anyone walking on the wildish path knows that life, inside and out, is always speaking to us, nudging us this way or that, calling out to us in a voice our hearts can hear, and sometimes, life takes us by the shoulders and gives us a good shake!
The day after the rattling, I took to the woods to sort myself out.
As luck would have it, many the of the leaves were still holding onto the branches – this late Fall day. As I stepped my boots onto the cold forest floor, underneath a golden canopy of mighty trees, I felt my body shake a little with each and every step. As I walked deeper into the forest and up the mountain ridge, the human-made world began to fall away. The aches and disappointments, the despair and ignorance, born of our human-created messes fell from my flesh to the ground, to the ancient Earth. I could feel how tired I had (and have) become of listening to the human drama, I longed to hear what the forest had to say.
So, I walked and walked and walked and walked.
I found myself crouching on a big stone in a creek, gorging on deep breaths of that muddy scent, watching the twinkle of the morning sunlight dancing atop the water, listening to the bubbling of the waters flowing easy, over and around stones. I wondered whether the drops of water had any sense of being individual drops. I wondered what water would say if it could speak human language. I wondered if it would have one voice or many. I wondered…
As I kept walking, gusts of gentle wind with big sound would come through and make leaf confetti so jaw-dropping I stopped in my tracks and gasped. As the leaves fell down around us, the insects and squirrels and birds, I received it as a tree blessing. All those leaves which had begun to sprout in early Spring, had grown big and strong and green in Summer, and turned to gold and orange and red this Autumn, and then made their long descent on the wind, received by the rich soil right before my very eyes. I was honored to bear witness, heart-flooding, and said a hundred or more thank yous. Thank you, thank you, thank you…
I walked for 45 miles that week, along the same path, just a little further and a little further and a little further each day. Each morning, there were less and less leaves on the trees and more and more making a blanket on the forest floor. I’d be lying if I said, my heart didn’t ache a little as I watched the trees return to their boney selves, their Winter selves. As I walked on the lush carpet of gold, my boots, crunched the leaves, breaking down their bodies, helping them with the long decomposition process they were destined for. It would not be too long before those golden leaves were back home in the soil that nourished them. It would not be too long until their bodies were feeding the trees from which they were born.
The forest had so much to say, to show, to be, as it always does.
Each afternoon, when I got back home, I’d sit
with my journal and my grateful heart to write down the little moments of the forest sounds and sights I had heard and witnessed.
I made sure to write down messages from Spirit that come so readily in the woods and thanks yous to the forrest keepers and the trees and the Sun and more.
On these last days of Fall, nature offers profound teachings for any who pay attention. May more and more of us pay better and better attention.
May we all keep turning our ears and hearts toward the living & dying world ~ of which we are a part.
YOUR TURN
In the comments here, and/or in the privacy of your own heart or journal, please share:
What do you notice in the living world right now?
What have you seen/heard/experienced in nature recently that has felt important to you?
What is nature expressing?
Can’t wait to read ‘em.
