nature walks – The Light Behind the Story

A pond in Hooksett, NH that was a delightful destination to a nature walk with my husband. A popular path for many, yet walked with a reverence that holds the landscape with peace and joy.

If I go back to the origin of my blog’s title and consider the impetus of the name, I am reminded of the pulse behind the darkness. We are, undeniably, immersed in a time of chaos that can be over-whelming. More often than I’d like to, I find myself considering whether we are a World Gone Mad.

These days I can count insanity by just one degree of separation, sometimes less. On Sunday I conversed with a colleague who was trying to find her grounding after bearing witness to the aftermath of a senseless shooting: A father shot dead by a young man, unrelated. Two kids left behind to watch it from a car’s window.

In my hometown, the community FB page is filled with comments about a man who took it upon himself to drain an entire pond, destroying a beaver dam and countless lives, so that he and his friends could ride their snowmobiles in winter. A season used to be, but is not often, without snow.

I cannot help but wonder if the world has gone mad. Next door, the neighbor who talked to me about love and community years ago as we both displayed our Obama signs with hope has, it seems, turned to the dark side. The opposite of hope and love, staked to her ground.

What is happening? Why is it so easy for us to fall into hatred and fear? Why is it so difficult for us to pause, consider, and breathe the light back into our collective story?

We are succumbing to our own madness through a belief that our world is spinning out of our control. Thinking, ever-foolishly, that we are here to control it. The land is mine to mold my way…

Instead of, I am of the Earth, and therefore a part of all life it nourishes.

Simple facts forgotten. Ignored.

I honor the light in you that is also in me. Therefore, I will do no harm.

I find myself turning to the land with every excuse I can muster. I have taken up foraging as a reason to walk into my wild home and find peace and connection. Belonging returns when the heart opens back to its origins. More than ever I have become a fervent believer that our salvation as humans will only return when we turn to the Earth with reverence. And through this return, find our origin. We are of the Earth, but not limited by it.

One vast body boundless

Yet we allow ourselves to be limited by our own myopic vision. We allow fear to establish our parameters and this fear grows to mistrust, which too often turns to hatred.

I find myself using the term “toxic masculinity” all too often, but there is a disturbing truth to this phrase. It is what kills the hope and love inside of us. It is rapidly seeking dominance again, as it has so often done in our collective history. Why are we afraid of the softening? Why are we afraid of vulnerability? Of surrender? Of love?

We are not truly held by walls and barricades. They are blocks. Temporary, but more often than not, dangerous. They shut us out from the wider world. They block the light of life. They block the greater truth. They block the flow of energy that seeks our connection. They block our coming home to ourselves.

On Sunday, my colleague and I also spoke of this lose of connection. We are both yoga instructors, but our desire to thread this idea of union is not limited to the mat of practice. We spoke of Earth. Of nature and our connection to it. We spoke of how to bring the concepts of yoga, which share the teachings of all the ancient wisdoms, out into the community in a way that brings us home to ourselves through a reconnection with wonder and nature.

During one of my foraging walks with another friend, conversation led to physical education classes and how simple and effective it would be to switch the focus from competitive sports to exercises like nature walks. Imagine combining P.E. with science, writing, history, and, an inherent mindfulness. The possibilities turn from limiting, to limitless. It’s in some ways a radical shift in perspective, but it’s also a chance at our salvation. Each child given a sense of belonging instead of vying for one.

If we all had that sense of belonging, would we need to erect walls to separate? Would we need to point fingers and declare, “You are not good enough?”

True connection to one’s self and the greater “world,” unites. It is yoga. It is a coming home to the self and the self’s origins which, at its essence, is a limitless belonging.

One vast body, boundless

raindrop-1913347_1280 — Photo Credit: <a href="http://Image by Myriam Zilles from Pixabay” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Pixabay

I have been thinking about ephemeral beauty and how we cling to form like raindrops to branches. Our lives, individual only for a millisecond in the great cosmos of time. One shimmering spark holding onto a momentary existence, and yet the soul sings an eternal symphony. We are born through the woven membrane of light. Released into density for a moment, we cling to existence to become defined by matter.

At night, my dreams show me the clutter of the brain and how it folds memories of lack and doubt until darkness lets them loose to run amok. Our minds form impossible fantasies and horrors we think could never be real until we open our eyes and see the world we have created.

As I released to slumber last night, Badger threw open the veil to stare me in the face. Fearless digger, unearthing what I may try to hide, Badger gave way to Owl before I was flung into the shadowland. It’s almost funny how we tumble restless to the surrender. Revisiting old haunts we thought we had exorcised in the landscape of dreams. Least we think we are watching reruns, familiar specters morph into new forms and find another curtain to tug open.

How exhausting it can be to tumble backwards when life holds you for a mere millisecond, urging you only to let go.

Yesterday, I walked into the woods nearby our home with my family and our two dogs. Zelda led the way, choosing a trail we had never taken together. Only Rosy, myself and Daisy, who passed more than five years ago, had ventured down it before.

Rosy trailing the pack just ahead of me. Zelda, somewhere up ahead with Alex.

The day was over-cast and windy. The clouds, eager to rain, darkened the trail littered with last year’s leaves. While we walked, I took in what the forest reveals before growth unfurls. There were more fallen trees than I cared to count, their bare trunks leaning on their neighbors. Others were already splintering into decay in their final resting places on their forest bed. Beach leaves lightened the ground, bleached by winter to the color of sand. They lent a light to the forest that was absent from above.

You can just make out Zelda here, between Ava and Alex.

As we walked, I found myself wondering about the hand that guides unseen. Perhaps Daisy had urged Zelda’s feet to take us off the beaten path we were used to traveling together. Perhaps not. It doesn’t really matter. What matters was that we were there now, individually and together. Each of us mindful of our own moments.

Me and Daisy 12/25/14. Less than two months before she passed back into light.

“There goes the camera,” my daughter, ahead of me, caught the sign at the same moment I did. She knew I would linger to take a photo. While I did, I found myself wondering how long the sign had been there. If somehow I had missed it walking the path years ago with Daisy and Rosy. Who had placed the sign, and when?

E5B37CE3-D8AA-41ED-8121-450FF72B2E44 — The Namaste Tree that caught my eye.

I don’t remember too much from my jumbled dreams last night. Perhaps it’s because I choose not to. There were travels with familiar people, and those who were not so familiar. There was lots of clutter and the feeling of being pulled into too many directions, through no will but my own. There was the feeling of tending more for other’s wants and need, while neglecting the self. Perhaps it is not so surprising that there is one scene, in particular, that lingers with me.

I am sitting on a bus filled with people, traveling to some forgotten destination. A woman sits beside me. My guide for the night. She looks with intention into my face, then presses her hand to my heart. “I see the beauty of the light that is you,” she tells me. Even though her words are genuine and almost urgent, I’m not sure I believe them. Yet, it’s enough. Enough to weave the darkness back to dawn.

The word “Namaste,” is Sanskrit in origin. It is a greeting of one being to another. A bowing to honor, often with hands joined at the palms above the heart, of the light that resides in the other, that is also in the self. It is a gesture of reverence and of unity, and through Namaste we are reminded of the tapestry of light that threads through all life.

I like to think we are being reminded of this thread right now as we reside individually, yet together, in our shared millisecond of life. Reminded that within each form resides the beauty of the light that finds a temporary home inside each heart. A beauty that perhaps radiates more readily in some than in others, but only because of the block of fear.