The forest is a good place to take your troubles. When you walk there, you have to leave them behind, to pay attention to the rough terrain, to the rocks and roots buried beneath the carpet of fallen leaves. And the leaves themselves attract your notice with their varied shapes and colors so artfully arranged. The bark of the trees draws you with its dance of textures and hues that travel all the way up until they touch the sky. And all the while, there’s the wondrous silence, torn now and then by the wondrous calls of crows. You can pretend that you are a tree and stand perfectly still and sense the strength and wisdom that surrounds you. You can pretend that you’re breathing clean air, that the poisons coating everything around you, embedded in the soil beneath your boots, aren’t really there. And the trees will take your fear and sorrow and exchange them for their peace.
From the back porch I look through the rain at the trees on the southern hill, dear friends of mine for over 30 years. I tell them the news of the day. I wonder if our goings-on shock them, or if they just roll their tree eyes, or if they even care at all. But I tell them anyway. The Important Ones finally came to the town, some rousing hope; some rousing ire. For some hours at least, hope won, the glad of it rising in great cheers to the sky. Freezing rain pelted the people, but they didn’t care. Thinking about the rain was for another day. Tomorrow the awful questions would return, the unsolvable problems. But tonight they would sleep with ribbons of hope floating through their dreams. Hope. At last. Hope. I couldn’t tell what the trees thought of my tale. I noticed that their swelling buds softened their silhouettes against the gray afternoon’s sky. Spring is coming, I whispered to myself. Regardless.
The soil with all its little minerals and earthworms and burrowing things and bugs whose names I do not know, and grasses of every kind and weeds and all who feed on them, all those who creep and fly. The creek with its minnows and trout, and the streams and lakes and rivers, And here, these picturesque farms with their lives and their wonderful stories, and the woods, oh my darling, the woods. It all seems now like a picture in a book on a quickly turning page. Red barns, gold fields, blue dioxin skies.
As I walk through the mild air to see the swelling lilac buds, raindrops fall. They feel cool and heavy on my face. Perhaps, I think, they will wash the toxins from these buds and from the needles of my old spruce friends. Still, the poisons will remain in the soil. For centuries, I’m told. Walking with death so nearby lets you appreciate life. Every little detail of every ordinary thing becomes precious, beyond words. The sorrow is deep; the miracles are without number.
On the second day after the train derailed, I walked the circumference of the wetlands, a mere five miles away from where black plumes of toxic smoke were rising to meet the thick clouds of the sky. It was a cold day, and colorless. Whatever birds had been there, scouting for places to build their nests, to raise their young, had gone, taking their mating songs with them. And the songs of the trains were absent, too, the rhythmic clatter and squeal of iron wheels on the iron tracks that stretch above the pond, the penetrating notes of their whistles as they barrel across the weaving country roads half a mile away. As they stood there in stoic silence, did the trees know? Did the birds sound an alarm as they took flight? Was there anything in the wind’s scent, in its whispers, that hinted that the worst was yet to come? How could they have known, how could any of us have known, that while the trains would soon return, the silence of the living things would go on and on and on.
Maybe it’s me, but reality seems to be spinning rather wildly these days.
I feel like I’m sitting in some multiplex theater with, oh, maybe a couple dozen movies playing at one time. Each one of them is a slice of my life, each as real as the other. I’m here in the middle watching the movie screens revolve.
Each of the movies plays just long enough for me to remember where I was in the storyline and to play my role in what’s-happening-now, and then the next movie drops before me. It’s like dancing between worlds, or like wandering through a maze of revolving doors. The old TV show “Quantum Leap” comes to mind, and I laugh. That’s it, exactly.
The main movie this past week was a horror show where poisons fell upon the land and the waters, including mine. It held some heart-wrenching scenes. But there were other movies, too. The smiles of friendship and romance and Valentine’s Day. Poignant stories of loss and grief. Scenes of ordinary life – cooking dinner, washing dishes – seen through a soft, golden lens. Peaceful strolls through pine woods and stands of oak.
Weaving through them all was the ribbon of reminders that I posted on my wall to help me keep my composure when the movies spin too quickly or get too intense. “Smile,” one says. I like that one. It works every time. “Don’t be trapped by the spell. You are free.” That’s a good one, too; it reminds me that I always have choices.
I told you in an earlier letter about the one that says, “Look around you. Appreciate what you have. Nothing will be the same in a year.” That one took on new depth as I watched an environmental catastrophe enfold me in its grasp. Yes. Appreciate what you have.
The four phrases of the Loving Kindness Meditation are on my wall, too:
May I Now . . .
Be filled with loving kindness; Be safe and protected; Be resilient in mind and body; Live with ease and joy.
After I say them for myself, I look at my photos of friends and family and request the same for them, and then for all whose lives touch mine, which, of course, includes you.
I got to experience a vast range of emotions this past week. Somewhere in the middle of it, I saw a video of a man demonstrating how the strings in the lower range of a piano make powerfully penetrating sounds. The lowest would not only shake the whole piano, but the house in which it sat. I got a taste of the lower ends of the emotional scale as I took in what was happening around me.
And along with that, I got a refresher course in what happens when you’re there, caught up in the powerful frequencies of emotion at the lower end of the scale. If you don’t fight it, if you just kind of glide on its current and let it be there and let it be okay that it’s there even if its difficult to bear . . . if you can do that, you’ll find that you sink like some smooth stone in an unresisting stream and end up in a well of acceptance filled with understanding and love.
Not that “don’t fight it” is easy. Sometimes you gotta go through some shouting and tears to get there. But if you can get there, if you can just let go of the fight and let it be, it’s worth doing.
I hope that helps you in some way. I wish you the very best movies this week in the theater of your mind.
Like an island in time, the gentle days unfold. Snow melts. Waters flow. Geese swim in the swollen, rushing creek, honking their joy. In the midst of harshness, this mildness descends. And ‘though its stay is brief, it is enough to remind us of the wonder of it all, as we walk through the comforting air bare armed and softly smiling.
Last week, all this patch of ground held was a blanket of last year’s leaves. Nothing more. And I can’t tell you what woke them. But here they are, baby daffodils with fat yellow buds ready to bloom, all full of laughter, as if they know that they caught you by surprise. How do they know how to do that? How do any of us know when and how to slide from the darkness and show the world our light?
When I stepped from the thick brush into the clearing, the rustic wooden footbridge across the narrow ravine almost escaped my notice, so leaf-strewn was it, so at home among the pines. I paused half way from one side to the other, thinking how the bridge was like the moment between breaths, the one that smooths this Now to the next, and how there’s always sunlight up ahead, even when you’ve been a long while in a dark and tangled woods.
Subtlety asks that you tune your attention, sharpen it to see the layers and the play of them, the way one folds into another and contrasts with the next, and how the whole is made beautiful by their dance.
