Tag: wisdom of nature

Animals and Nature, Awakening, Inspiration, Mindfulness and Meditation, Mystery and Magic

3 situations when a walk in the woods is the best solution

ravenhearthealing

If 2020 has confirmed the truth of one thing for me, it’s the healing power of the natural world.

I have never felt more attuned to the vibrant energy of the river, the quiet presence of the trees, the beauty of the changing seasons and the comforting cycles of the moon than I have been this year.

I have the pandemic to thank for this intensified awareness, a silver lining if ever there was one.

And I have also noticed that there are certain recurring circumstances when a walk in the forest, by the river or through the fields is often the best and sometimes the only solution that works: that is when I’m stuck, when I’m bored, when I’m tired.

  1. When I am suffering from writer’s block, which right now can go on for days (OK…weeks), or I am working on something that really requires focus and I just can’t get past a certain point with it…I move. Sometimes a stretch and throwing the ball for the dog in the yard is enough. But more often what I really need is a walk by the river to clear my mind and be in my body.

    To simply take my problem into the peace of nature.

    Whether on a walk among the trees, a few minutes sitting on a riverbank, moving quietly under the moon and stars…always, it just comes…the free flow of ideas, the first sentence, the topic, the missing piece to the project.

    I’m telling you the answers and the inspiration are out there in the woods. We just have to be willing to go out there.

  2. Last week I spoke with my neighbor and asked him how he was doing and he said this: “To be honest, Shona…I’m bored.” I so appreciated his honesty because at this stage in the pandemic game we can probably all admit to being a little bored.And then it occurred to me that when I am feeling bored, out of sheer desperation sometimes, I get out of my house and head to the park or the woods. And to make it different, I don’t stride across the forest floor. Instead I stop to watch birds, I take my camera, I let myself pause and notice the busy squirrels, the chickadees, the last of the summer flowers.
    And voila!

    I become immersed in the present moment, I allow the outside world to enchant me, and my boredom is forgotten.

  3. I have known for a long time that if I am feeling fatigued, I will feel better and more energized after some exercise. And this has never been more true than now. Because frankly, I am fatigued.I am certainly tired of the news, the masks, the politics, and my own four walls.Weeks can go by and there are no Netflix shows left that I want to watch, no books that call to me, no project that moves me.For all that I am grateful to be healthy and safe and living with my family in Canada, I am also sometimes antsy and grumpy and tired of the marathon that 2020 has become.

    And this my friends, this is exactly when I most need to walk in the forest.

    It is restorative.

    When I am depleted, it fills me up with energy, with calm, and with love for life again.

So in essence, what I am really suggesting here – in all of these situations – is that you allow yourself to be enchanted by nature.

A walk in the woods or on the shore or through the fields is never the wrong answer.

And with all that is happening with our world on fire, it is past time we went outside, listened to the river, touched the bark of the trees, inhaled the smell of cedar in the fall and root ourselves in the knowledge that we are part of her and part of a greater cycle.

We belong outside, we belong to the earth.

In seeking her magic and healing energy we will find our way through, and our way home.

 

 

Animals and Nature, Awakening, courage, gratitude, grief

Learning how to walk with my ancestors

ravenhearthealing

The other day, an oriole on a watering can reminded me of an important truth.

A few years ago, when my aunt died, I was looking after her estate. Although my aunt had been a very challenging presence in my life, I had a deep affection and love for her. In my grief I was still present enough to appreciate the sharp and analytical mind that had enabled her to keep her affairs well organized, her investments sound, and all her ducks in a row well into her 80’s.

I remember sitting in the dining room with all of her bank statements and bills and investment portfolios spread out on the large table in front of me. Much of this stuff may as well have been written in Greek, because I’m an English major, not an accountant.  Occasionally I would find little notes of encouragement from her scribbled on the top of files – she knew I would be looking after things when she was gone, and while she seemed to have complete faith in me, she understood that I would not be enjoying this part of it.

So as I doggedly worked there in a sea of papers and spreadsheets, punctuated by little jolts of love as I found her notes, I was startled to see a bright, beautiful oriole at the dining-room window.  It was perched on the window ledge and it was literally pecking at the glass, as if to get my attention. I caught my breath and was spell bound, it was so close and it stayed at that window for almost a minute. Cocking its head, looking at me.

When it flew away I smiled. I felt as though my aunt had come to visit and offer me her blessings, perhaps it was her way of telling me not to give up. Regardless, I was just so thrilled to have an oriole at my window.

And then, a few moments later, this same oriole appeared on the opposite side of the dining room, at the other window.  It had flown right around the entire house, to peer in this other window and peck at the glass.

And as I sometimes do when nature speaks directly to me, I burst into tears.

I felt all my aunt’s love flow over me and course through me in that moment.

I felt so blessed and so loved and so at peace with the process before me.

I whispered “thank you, thank you” to that tiny orange bird until it finally flew away. I have held this memory in my heart ever since.

And so last week, as I was once again working on my personal and business income tax papers – a task I can easily find any reason to put off (procrastination) and about which I can feel defeated before I even begin because I don’t think I’m good at it (perfectionism)  – I looked out the window and saw an oriole. It was perched on the red watering can next to our vegetable garden. It hopped on and off that watering can a couple of times. It turned this way and that. It cocked it’s head at me.

I threw open the window and spoke to it.  Whispered words of welcome and love and joy to it. Because of course every time I see an oriole I know my aunt it with me.

And then it dawned on me that I was once again at a desk doing accounting work…and that she was lending me the power of her presence. Lending me her expertise, her business savvy, her confident, analytical mind. She was telling me, you can do it, I’m here to help. So just keep going.

Flowing from her to me through the oriole was all the wisdom and know-how she possessed. How do I know this? Because I could feel it. I was not alone with my task, and I no longer felt so intimidated by it.

I learned (again) that I could do hard things – especially when I called in my ancestors, the wisdom in their bones and blood flowing to me and within me.

And so that blessed oriole reminds me, my aunt reminds me, that I can ask for and receive help from those who came before me. The gifts and talents of our ancestors are available to us. They flow to us on the wings of the birds.

Whatever hard tasks lie before us, many of them far harder than filling out an income tax form, I know this: we are not alone. The ancestors walk with us. And they have done hard things before.

 

 

Animals and Nature, Awakening, creativity, gratitude, Inspiration, Mindfulness and Meditation

What to do when you feel so uninspired

ravenhearthealing

Whenever I think I have nothing left to write, when I feel so uninspired, I make myself move.  And in the cold, icy days of winter, I am not exaggerating when I say that I have to coerce myself into taking a walk outside.

I think of Wordsworth, the Romantic poet, who legend has it would stride across the English moors for hours, in all kinds of weather, finding there the tranquility and inspiration for his poetry.

Movement and nature – at the very least they offer a way to prevent our creative energy from stagnating, and at their best a doorway to infinite inspiration.

It makes sense that Wordsworth would hike, long and often, if his many, beautiful creative works are anything to go by – stirring the pot, moving from yin (passive receptivity, waiting for inspiration to knock down your door) to yang (moving to greet or to seek inspiration).

So on one of my last walks, stirring the yang with dogged determination (a beautiful blue sky, sun on the snow and frigid temperatures– my cheeks red, my nose and eyes watering, yet somehow sweating my way up the hills in my big, down-filled winter coat) and thinking of Wordsworth (as you do), I notice how inspiration almost always comes to me within the first five minutes of my walk, it starts before I’ve even crested the hill…and along the river it unfolds in my mind. And I smile.

I used to worry that I would lose the idea, that I should rush home to write it down – but even when there is a delay between the inspiration and the writing, the words always come back to me.

Perhaps that is the nature of inspiration – it is not springing from my mind but entering my mind from a divine source that does not rely on my thinking mind or my memory – it only needs my willingness to receive…to enter back into a yin state like a fluid dance, to open myself to inspiration through a willingness to move my body and to quiet my mind.

I confess that Wordsworth was never my favorite Romantic poet – as a student I found him too flowery, too earnest, too…cheesy (I prefer Blake or Coleridge).  But he has helped me here in some tangible way, for the Romantics held all of nature dear, in the face of the Industrial Revolution that saw the countryside depopulated, and the rise of science with it’s relentless rationalizing of the natural world –  in their writing they offered us daffodils, a grain of sand, an abbey in the moonlight.

They knew what was being overlooked, lost, and forgotten…they saw nature through the eyes of love and wonder.

They were humbled by her beauty and they spoke for her against the great noise and machinery of progress.

On this walk I imagine Wordsworth, I imagine how- had he lived in Ontario- he may have written in his elegant hand about the humble Humber River that flows near my home.  I take joy -as I am certain he also did- in the movement of my body through the fields, in simply being outside in the cold air, among the trees, next to the swift-moving but silent river full of fresh snow.

In the midst of this natural beauty I am glimpsing the never-ending winding stream of time that brings us all back here – to a moment of movement, vision and eternal stillness.

A perfect present moment under the sky, where hope and inspiration lost are found, where:

I listen’d, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
– William Wordsworth, from The Solitary Reaper

 

 

Animals and Nature, Authenticity, Awakening, gratitude, Mindfulness and Meditation

When all seems lost I listen to the trees

ravenhearthealing

I know it may seem like a deeply creative act, that is – an act of pure imagination – to presume that I could have a conversation with a tree…but I have.

I have sat beneath Oak, Ponderosa Pine, Sugar Maple, Spruce, Black Walnut, Weeping Willow, Poplar, Cedar, Locust, Birch and Elm to name but a few — and we have silently communed.

Some of the best conversations I have ever had have been with trees and I can assert, like Bob Ross, that “there’s nothing wrong with having a tree for a friend.”

Apart from offering their grounded and immensely healing and peaceful energy, trees have something particular to say to me.  And that is that although I love my time in the forest, and I prefer to go into the forest alone (for those are my moments to commune in joy with nature and the immense design of things) – I am supposed to bring you (all of you) into the woods. “Bring the others” the trees whisper to me, over and over.  It’s like an assignment, my task, the answer to my burning desire to fulfill my purpose.

I am called to bring you outside, into the forest, to the very base of a tree. And let the trees take care of you.

And they already are taking care of you. As my friend, gifted artist and fellow tree-lover Anni Bretschneider  reminds us: “There’s strong growing evidence that trees communicate through their root systems. It’s a thriving community network that includes Mother trees redirecting resources to younger saplings. Trees provide fruit and flowers, food, protection with their canopy, medicine, seeds, temperature control, shelter and habitat for animals and birds. Their roots absorb excess water, provide flood protection and reduce soil erosion. Trees provide the raw materials to build the tables we eat on, the chairs we sit in, the fires we burn and the homes we live in. Your very life and our ecosystem depend wholly on trees to survive. It is a reciprocal relationship where trees filter our air and keep it clean by exchanging CO2 gases and oxygen. And, as a community, trees give us tremendous beauty through captivating forests.”

Science has discovered so much about trees and their role in regulating temperature, weather and climate on the earth. I would like to believe that our salvation lies in science…but I find it easier to believe that salvation can be found in the forests and jungles of this sweet earth.  And I feel that if we do not know and love the woods and trees of the land that holds us, we will not care if it burns.

And if we cannot know the woods and trees of the land that holds us as OURSELVES…we won’t care when it’s all burned down, when nothing is left for our children or grandchildren or their children.

And so many of us are lost.  Not lost in the woods like the children in fairy tales but lost in a wasteland of our own making, relentlessly attached to our technology which pulls us ever further from the calm, healing love of the natural world – a world where we are perfect just as we are – thin enough, smart enough, good enough…enough.

We have forgotten who we are…but the trees know.

They long to bathe us in their love and remember us back into being.  They live, in part, to let us know that we belong in the woods, with them. Although the outdoors may feel like foreign, even hostile terrain to us, gritty with dirt, biting bugs, heat and cold and mud and pollen, and even bears, we belong there.

It’s time to get lost in the woods again.

How can we connect with and have gratitude for trees? Hug one – yes, be a tree hugger. Or at least place your hand on one and feel it’s bark.
Drink in it’s shimmering beauty with your eyes.
Talk to one.
Sit with one.
Paint one.
Write about one.
Love one.
Listen.

And if you will not or cannot go outside and sit by a tree, then at your Maple desk or Pine kitchen table or Mahogany bookshelf, feel that wood grain under your fingers, the vibrant grooves, the way it meets your energy softly, returns your touch in a way that steel or cement or glass never can. Because that wood – it was once alive.

And all that’s left now is for us to be grateful, for all that has been given.  For all we stand to lose.

So will you go outside now and stand with the trees? Will you listen?  Just listen and breathe and be thankful.

For the Oak, she keeps asking me “Where are the others? Bring them and gather here in the forest, beside me. Let us breathe together and be together, again. All the lost children of earth, come to me now and be found.”

 

 

 

Animals and Nature, Awakening, freedom, Joy, Mindfulness and Meditation, Mystery and Magic

This is why I walk barefoot in the woods

ravenhearthealing

Today on my walk I did something different.

At the start of the trail, I took off my arch-supporting runners and my sweat-wicking, odour-controlling socks and walked barefoot through the woods.

I had to really concentrate on where I was going, to really look at the dirt of the path, the rocks, find the patches of still tender green grass on the side, avoid the roots and mud.

The difference to walking with shoes was both dramatic and subtle.

Because I could feel every part of the path with my feet, and I had to slow down, it was as if I was seeing this forest and this trail for the first time.

It felt…different…because for the first time the soles of my feet were greeting this landscape. And when I paused, I could sense a subtle change in the way this forest, this beautiful piece of nature reached out to me; no longer disconnected by the insulating rubber barrier of my runners, I felt recognized and yet at the same time undetectable, almost invisible.

As if I had become part of the forest,

a rock on the path,

a fly in the air,

the dancing leaves on the tree.

Birds seemed to startle at my quiet barefoot approach in ways I hadn’t noticed when I walked (probably faster and more stridently) in my shoes.  I had to slow down.  The bugs, the squirrels, the blackbird all got a good look at me.

Near the end of the path I was slow and quiet enough to notice a pitter-patter on the long grasses and low bushes next to me.  The sky was blue, cloudless, and I could see that it wasn’t raining…so I peered closer…and discovered that it was in fact raining caterpillars, from a nest high in the tree above.  I laughed, for this felt like a perfect ending to my barefoot roaming, the fuzzy brown tent caterpillars, in their cozy fall sweaters, free falling and dreaming of flying again, with white wings in the autumn breeze.

I share this because all of my barefoot walks, but especially this one, continue to show me how nature is not for me, it is part of me and more importantly I am part of it.

I am learning to listen when it calls, to walk the forest paths barefoot when I can, so I can slow down, so I can be found again. The forest tells me I belong here, just as I am.

Her dirt is still between my toes, and on my heels, now on my kitchen floor, I feel young and alive and somehow free.  I have found the way home, it’s right outside my door, it’s right outside your door.

My bare foot prints in the dirt are an invitation answered, a longing understood and redeemed, a deliberate stepping into the great cathedral.

Won’t you join me in the woods?

Walk barefoot in the fields, by the river.

Let yourself be found.