I finally got a walk in the woods over the weekend. I literally hugged the trees-the Slash Pine, The Loblolly, and the Longleaf. I am finding living in the concrete of the city a little hard. I’m a mountain girl, but if I can’t have a mountain, please give me trees. Trees are Life. We are able to breathe because of trees and I carry a deep grief in me over the clear-cutting of these East Texas woods I came to visit every year as a child. When life and responsibilities press in on my lungs, I’ve got to take a walk in the woods, gather up oxygen, and breathe.
There are several documentaries and books (see links below) on the language of trees and how a whole forest will communicate like a village. Trees are alive and intelligent and I can feel life and vitality pulsing through a tree when I place my hand on the the trunk, close my eyes, and be still. The trees not only offer us life, they protect us. I prayed with these trees, asked forgiveness for their eradication, and prayed for their survival; not just because their survival is linked to my own, but that they might thrive, with or without the human race.
My spiritual director in seminary would always share a poem with me at the end of our sessions. As an ordination gift, she sent me Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems. The first poem, by Hannah Stephenson affirmed this need for a walk in the woods. Sit with it for a bit and go for a walk in the woods soon.
Ancient Language
If you stand at the edge of the forest
and stare into it
every tree at the edge will blow a little extra
oxygen toward you
It has been proven
Leaves have admitted it
The pines I have known
have been especially candid
One said
that all breath in this world
is roped together
that breathing is
the most ancient language
Magdalena's Musings 