Walk With Me
Will you come for a walk with me? I’ve been trapped inside, imprisoned by a vile host of invaders and condemned to life on the couch—so it seems. Snow has come and melted away again, the sun rises and calls the birds into praise of its coming, and I watch from inside. I’m tired of being trapped, and I’m still too tired to go out, and so…
Will you come for a walk with me?
We can take the path through the meadow, where the sun shines most brightly. Already the short grass is beginning to green, the long grass of last summer bent into brown borrows for the small things that scurry. Our cat, whenever he catches one of them for his dinner, ends up with a mouthful of grass, too, like an enormous, drooping mustache. You should see him with a mouthful of field grass and mouse, it’s pretty funny. He isn’t here, of course, it’s just us. We can take any path that we wish, but let’s start here. The ground has some give to it beneath the thick covering of grass, the earth beginning to warm. Sink into it, feel the regenerative energy of the Mother coalescing as spring creeps closer. In a few more weeks she will be bursting out in color and light and the hum of a new year growing, and now, right now, all that energy is already here, just beneath our feet, waiting. Do you feel it?
Close your eyes and turn your face up to the sun. Don’t worry, you won’t trip or stray, your feet know the way. Let the sun speak into your body all the soft, warm words we so often struggle to use with ourselves. What is it telling you? Feel the strengthening heat of our star, the new intensity of his light. The sun is a beacon calling forth the spring. As the moon pulls the tides from the sea, and from women, so the sun pulls on the reproductive forces within the earth, bringing forth new life in its time. Feel the tension melt from your face, neck, shoulders. The sun holds us all in his daily embrace. Let yourself need the light, like a plant kept too long in shadow, and relax into the need being filled. It is good to walk in sunlight.
Don’t mind me, I touch all the trees as I walk by, my fingers lightly brushing the tips of branches or caressing bark as I pass. They are my friends. Here, try it; there’s no better way to feel connected and grounded than to touch a tree. Maybe it’s because trees are so connected to each other, communicating through the vast and mysterious network of their roots. Look at the trunk of a tree for a while and you will see a miniature roadmap, insects trailing up and down the tree at all times of year. Look up into their branches and you will probably see some kind of nest, if not actual animal residents or visitors. Trees are never alone. Close your eyes now and rest your hands and face against their bark. A tree’s skin is never as rough as you might think, there is always some softness or smoothness, a variation in texture. Deep beneath this thick skin the lifeblood of the tree is quickening, just like the earth. Feel the slow surge of energy pressing up now, through the veins beneath the bark and out into the branches. Soon there will be leaves, flowers, fruit. Soon—but already the potential for those magical things is here, hidden beneath naked bark; a reservoir of possibility and promise. It has carried the tree through many winters now long past, and almost, almost through this one.
If we could reach through the tree could we feel all the trees around us? What would that feel like? What would it be like to live so completely grounded in community? If we tried, could we feel each other in the same way?
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