I didn’t intend to write a blog post this morning among the list of things I wanted to accomplish, but sometimes what plan to do is not what we were meant to do.

When I walked out of the door this morning, Crow greeted me as she often does these days, from somewhere hidden among the tall trees in my yard. She continued to call each time I brought more boxes to the end of the drive for donation, and I thought of her, later, when I stepped into the woods with my two canine companions. I’m almost certain a third was with me, in spirit. Tomorrow will mark the year of her passing, but I did not weep for this loss.

In truth, I had not been thinking about Daisy, but about the life that lives in the woods down the road from my house, where I have long enjoyed walking with my dogs and family. Once, my daughter and I saw a pack of coyotes running through the trees. Today, I noted the tracks of deer and wild rabbit marking paths home through the fresh snow.

The morning was quiet, aside from the incessant hum of traffic that always filters through the trees, and the soft tread of my feet, accompanied by the dogs runny ahead of me. Rosy and Zelda were filled with joy, as they always are when they step inside these woods.

About a month ago I had a dream. I was sitting on the hillside below the forest, where children sled in winter, and families gather in the summer to listen to music. I was looking at the vast sky above where dragonflies dance, when the message came through, “Don’t let them bulldoze this sacred ground.”

Now, weeks later, long ropes of tape mark off the boundaries around several acres of trees. Wooden stakes in the ground label potential gravel dumps and irrigation ditches. There is even one that says “pond” where there is no water. I almost laughed at the irony, but instead I cried. Standing among the sentient beings of the forest who speak in a language most have forgotten, I wept for this sacred ground that so many call home. When did we forget? I wondered. We are of the Earth.

Perhaps we need to forget in order to remember. I know that each time I have forget my sacred connection to my Truth, and the much wider Truth of Life, my body/mind/spirit becomes out of alignment until I have no choice but to remember.

We are of the Earth, but we do not own the Earth. She, in fact, owns our bodies, where are made from her nutrients. Long before we walked her surface, she was here, flourishing with life. She will be here long after we leave, broken perhaps, but she will heal. We depend upon her, she does not depend upon us.

At some point, the collective consciousness of humanity chose to forget. There are times when I think it is almost a burden to feel everything, but this is one of those mornings when I am so very grateful that I have chosen to reside in a vessel that remembers how to feel this sacred connection to all life. I believe we all have this ability to feel, this innate knowing, but many of us have chose to forget.

We value our homes. We love the beauty we create, and the money we make is invested into making our homes as beautiful as we can, yet what about this larger home we all share, that we all depend upon? When did we forget that we walk upon sacred ground? When did we forget to that the air we breathe comes from the lungs of Earth we call trees? 

Clean air and water have become a universal gift of a long forgotten past, because of us. I walk the woods to remember Home. I walk the woods to feel whole again. When there is a rip in the web, we are all affected.

It has sadly become an abnormality. An uncool condition. A label of scorn…to remember connection. To remember Home. To remember that all life is sacred, and that the “I” cannot exist without the “We.”