Tag Archives: nature

Safe start

New growth casting a strong shadow at the base of its elder whose bark is peeled and crusty and its trunk, at first curved onto something solid and safe, but then upright and confident, enabling it to create something new.

Sometimes we do not know what we’re doing or where we’re going and we bend and curve to what is asked of us not realizing that we’re just a crooked old tree until light, knowledge hits us and we reach up and create something new.

Are you playing it safe or are you reaching and creating?

Light

Light filtering on scalloped edges and veins creating new images. Some broad. Some clear.

Each day brings a new light and with it the opportunity to create something new in your life. It doesn’t matter if it’s a broad or narrow approach as long as you continue to reach and to grow, so that the light is able to filter through you and onto others.

They stand before us

They stand before us, dependent.

The next generation with wondrous eyes and trusting hearts whose unhardened tips are still kelly green and soft. They have yet to taste bitterness, hardship or disappointment.

They stand before us trusting we will love and nurture, shed our experiences and wisdom like a delicate bed of pine needles, encompassing and sheltering their future.

They stand before us expecting a fertile and viable soil to cultivate, just as we expected of our elders who believed in us enough to honor and preserve the earth.

They stand before us and ask that we give them the same opportunities that were given to us, and to love and cherish the land and each other, so that they can have thick bark and strong deep roots to endure the storms, and lasting branches of foliage green with energy from the sun.

She calls to herself

She calls to herself.

A gentle warm breeze infused with pine and hemlock reminded her to breathe, to come back from wave upon wave of thought. Some important but most not.

She knew that this moment was all that she really had. She was determined take her spirituality seriously this time because she could feel a strong connection to her higher self, that eternal self, calling to her with each and every moment. She made the eternal self promise to keep calling her.

She knew it would be more difficult in the beginning, to stand in the present moment. That maintaining the holy instant was kind of like trying to balance on the head of a pin but she didn’t care. She wanted this.

The breeze blew again. Breathe.

She calls to herself.

The storm

Slick rock and wet leaves surrounding roots like toes curled in boots of tension and indecisive actions. Days of spring rain falling, half of you still a clear thought, amidst an exhausting amount of hopeful wishes.

How does this happen? How can it rain for days, soak everything around you but somehow half of you stays dry?

It’s because of your canopy. The depth of layered foliage that you’ve managed to grow and nurture. The learned responses to stress or unfamiliar moments that help you to become strong and thick.

It’s because of your tribe. Those that surround you and stay tight to your outermost branches, weaving their leaves with yours. It doesn’t matter that you are maple and they an oak, or you an ash and they a pine.

May you be surrounded. May you be thick with the gift of foliage. May you weather this storm and the next.

Sweet

Large bloom of white, protecting and surrounding, standing out in the forest, deep dark and rich. Fragrant small buds like children holding the future of the species, fertile. Sweet, oh so sweet nectar abounds as the forest begins to awaken to long warm summer evenings of growth, swollen with life.

Sometimes we just need to know that we are protected. We need to know that our needs will be met. Once we realize that they always are, that this journey we call life is as it should be, then we can taste the sweet nectar. Then we can swell with life. Then we can live.

Begin

Warm light on soft white petals holding thought and action. Pollen as seeds, as desires, as possibilities tucked in, held and protected. An expression, still, until the warm light comes. Love, the light of knowledge that turns to the wind of wisdom.

She awaits the opportunity, her opportunity, to open and share her seeds, her pollen, for others to use as food for their family or just to look upon them and enjoy.

Just below the surface

He stands out among the others, older yes, and yet somehow full of life without his shell. His exterior has no bark. Lines, so many lines, some deep and wide and others narrow yet most curve and connect, a whole colony of experience.

We don’t have to wait until we are old and worn to change. We don’t have to wait until all of the things in our life eat at us and make tunnels and holes and cracks. We don’t have to wait until what bugs us begins to connect and make a pattern. We don’t have to wait until it causes our bark to peel away and expose our inner hardened eaten self that allowed it to happen.

We can free what is just below the surface and be our true self.

Spring love

They found each other in a patch of warm soft soil, meeting for the first time yet their roots entwined. Their look and feel are the same, a beautiful shade purple and green and maroon. Were they always like this? Have they known each other before, perhaps in another spring lifetime?

Neither one cares because this moment is all that matters.