On Nature

For the past few months or so, Sean and I have been living completely outdoors on the weekends. I cook outside in my beautiful outdoor kitchen with a pro range. I shower outside and the water pressure is better than at home. I wander the woods and things emerge. I listen and hear what I thought was not possible. I see things that I hadn’t noticed before in my surroundings. I see systems, cycles, and relationships that I previously did not know. I see possibility where I thought there was none.

Nature has much to tell me about how things work and how I fit into the puzzle. Everything is linked. We collectively destroy systems and we are collectively destroying the perfect balance of nature.

Humans have become separated from nature and we suffer the consequences without realizing it. It is uncomfortable for lots of us to be out in nature for extended periods of time. We miss our comforts, and cannot fill our addiction to media, email and texts. We have become intolerable of weather conditions or bugs, wildlife, and all kinds of stinging plants. Our senses are dulled. We see no action where there is a plethora of life around us.

The more we stay out of it, the more we become other than nature.

It makes it easier for us to be oblivious to climate change and harder for us to let go of the comforts we have become accustomed to. 

I know this, but I am learning this firsthand.

It is probably obvious that we have become disconnected from nature, but it becomes hyper obvious when we reconnect to our Being through Nature. When we return to simplicity and take in what we used to perceive as nothing going on. The rich palette of “somethingness” occurring amongst us is nature and its systems. It becomes real when we seek to harmonize with that environment.

I cannot see it or know the subtlety of its presence unless I become it. I enter it wanting to see and know more. My senses become tuned in. I open to a new way of assimilating.

I can only compare it to listening to the music of the spheres in which I place myself in that possibility. I open myself to something I once believed I could not hear. That opening and that softness allow me to take in something from another place within me and without me. 

It is the place that connects me to these unseen forces. 

The way to this understanding is through the blurring of my habitual ways. I maintain my sense of self and yet I yield to the Nature around me, waiting, being, and absorbing.

I pass through a veil that has separated me; a veil that has created other. On the other side, the bird’s call now has a robust frequency that carries greater meaning. The leaves tremble with light force. The ground carries security and cohesion to hold it all together. It catches me too.

The trees are the antennas and the company; the unity and diversity. They connect me to the sky and the sun. They send the message that I function the same way and ask that I please take note of it.

Everything is in cycle, ebb and flow, ever-changing and yet moving through a constant that anchors me to that movement. The movement is also the stillness, a frequency, that I can relate to like music. It is the yes and no, this movement in stillness and stillness in movement. It is my Being in relation to all of it.

It comes in the quiet search for something in the nothingness and the letting go of that search. The minute that happens, it surges forward like the rustle of the breeze through the alders that carry laughter and sadness and a spoken thing.

I can only know this from a reduction of distraction and chaos, both within and without. My inner efforts meet the outer dynamic symphony of events that seemed like nothing before. It reminds me of awakening to a higher consciousness that was always there but I was not aware of it. 

From there, walking through life was, and still is, a new experience to embrace every single day.

Fewer laws apply and much more is possible.

With my time in nature, I sync up with all of me in it and it in me. No other. From this, I know I belong. My will moves through me into the world. 

No Filter.

The bird people are with me night and day. I know so many calls and signals. Their agitation lets me know when Owl, who is completely inaudible and hovering above me, is in the vicinity. I know the call of the Raven who comes by with audible flapping wings to say pay attention now. I know the starlings, wrens, woodpeckers, Canadian geese, chickadees, rufous hummingbirds, 5 kinds of raptors, and sometimes I can hear the Black Oystercatchers in the distance. 

I know the treefrog season and the life of an alder. I can see which alders are ready to fall.

I know this and I know me better by being a part of it. I work with it because it is a mighty force that has made its presence known.