Forest Bathing

Forest Bathing

Walking through our water edged land I pondered what made being here so special. What was it about this landscape that calmed my breath, relaxed my shoulders, and settled my mind.  Foremost I was experiencing all the ingredients for connection with nature. Instead of sirens and trucks I was hearing bird songs and the raw sound of wind and water. Instead of lights 24/7 I was experiencing the moon and the stars, even the satellites felt like part of a natural sky. Down by the river human activity gave way to gurgling, chirping, and breeze. When I looked I saw plants, animals, and water, not concrete, glass and cars. I didn’t need to watch my step or navigate anger, decide which way to safely move through. There wasn’t the detritus of humanities bias towards fellow humans. Just space with which my body has thousands of years of experience . 

Here now, I meditate on how to keep these 15 acres surrounded by water sacred. Not in a religious way, but a profound connection. A being present, listening without adding. I want to see it not as a physical resource to be used by the demands of living, but as a space where I can be touched by the elements around me. There is privilege involved in being able to be on your rural land, while creating most of the resources for that land from the city. We are lucky that way. Our western minds are taught and developed to see resources for the taking. We are taught to see the world as other and competitive, including nature. Survival of the fittest. We are starting to make inroads into this thinking. Yes, there are predators and prey, but the more we delve into the nuances of nature we are uncovering (literally in many cases), that there is an incredible amount of communication and reciprocity among our wild brethren. Trees and fungi communicate and share resources through mycelium networks, birds and animals share through vocalizations and behavior, the earth itself communicates in ways we are not aware of, though you can sense it at the edges of our consciousness. As humans we communicate with our bodies to all of the above. However, resources can mean different things. How about recourses for the soul? This landscape speaks to us. The people who lived here long before my ancestors knew this land still speak today of how the land and they are not separate. In my most peaceful and connected moments I can feel the thousands of years we have been graced by these very waters, trees, and animals. I want to wriggle into the bank just above Wind River, watching, hearing, smelling, touching the ripples and waves, the reflected sunlight and on those special nights the soft dance of moonlight.

Our western minds are also trained to categorize. Phylum and Species, Latin and English. This is a Douglas Fir, this is a Grand Fir, this is a Scotch Broom, this a Stinging Nettle. They are all nouns, names, captured, organized. Some of the local tribes treated this abundance around them as verbs in their language, living beings that had autonomy and creation. To Beaver, to Bear, and they extended that to the landscape, to River and to Bay. They come alive, have action, have self. They are not things to be owned and used, but whole unto themselves to be experienced. This is the magic, the divine.

A landscape of which I may observe and participate, to experience. It has a language, a story, an autonomous self. If I sit quietly enough, shut up my mind, forget all I have been instructed, and “be” it starts to reveal itself. First the sounds: The many voices, my breath, tree rustle, raven call, squirrel mew, water gurgle, rock roll. The smells: earth rich, berries sweet, fungi pungent, breeze off the water, pollen off the trees. The feel: moist mud, rough bark, stinging insect, sharp edge of the blade of grass. Then I open my eyes, sight: blue sky, green foliage, so many greens, white clouds shape shifting, blinking water, turkey vulture high and far, black fly low and close, tiny and bountiful ant, light green blade of grass. Taste: clear fresh water, tasty tiny wild strawberry, sweet huckleberry, bitter leaf, pungent mushroom. Yum 

Silent me, tucked into a bank, surrounded by the forest, stripped of the everyday, letting go of doing, forgetting the categories, dispensing with the knowing, leaving the detritus, I slip away and am held by the forest and stream, rock and river, sky and earth. Come join us in our Forest Bath.