Today it’s the play of light:
for an instant, just the tops of trees are touched by morning sun.
Churning grey clouds bring into focus the sun-kissed leaves
turning green hues to glowing gold.
Yesterday it was the breathtaking outline of seed heads–
wild grasses swaying in the wind
shapes and color and light and calm.
These moments. This beauty.
It does more than just bring me back to myself.
It’s bigger than that.
It’s about love.
When anything and everything else feels complicated,
I go to…or even just recall…
the sounds of the creek flowing over and around rocks.
The hushed silence or swirling gusts in a forest thick with trees.
And I feel love. And loved.
Softly or abruptly awakened by the sensory balm of Wildness.
In touch with the me that knows how to love.
How to hold the hard places with softness.
How to see beyond circumstance.
How to connect, how to trust, how to Be.
Maybe you’ll write this off right now
as the musings of tree hugger.
And no one would blame you.
But before you go, indulge me for just a moment.
Look into the eyes of a beloved pet
or spend a moment watching trees sway or waves move
or whatever is familiar and Wild in your neck of the woods.
And recall your understanding that this world is not just human.
That sometimes, maybe all of the time,
it behooves us to commune with other things.
Creatures and plants and gusts of wind.
Antlers and hawks and the color green.
So that when we turn back to one another
we know who and where we are.
And what matters. And what doesn’t.
