Thanksgiving in the Woods

It is Thanksgiving weekend and I am walking in one of my favourite areas, Grant’s Woods, near Orillia, Ontario.  This land was owned and loved by the Grant family for over a century before it was donated for to the Couchiching Conservancy for public visits.  It was not “logged” like most of the land in the area and so there are huge old growth white pines, red oaks, beeches and sugar maples throughout the forest like grandparents and great grandparents of the smaller, younger trees and tiny saplings.  It takes three people holding hands to encircle some of the trees and I usually bring my attention up into the canopy, straining to see the tops entwined with each other.

Wild Ginger leaves

But today, the ground feels spongy beneath my feet and I bring my awareness to the earth and what is beneath me.  As I look to the forest floor I see the abundant, dark green, heart-shape leaves of the wild ginger.  My thoughts are sent below the surface to their gingery-smelling roots.  I am instantly surprised at the feeling of energy building below the surface, in the roots of the trees, shrubs, and plants that surround me.  “Of course”, my left, rational brain declares, “they are all storing sugars in their                                                                                       roots in preparation for                                                                                         winter.”

As often happens in the woods, I try to apply what the forest teaches me, to my own life.  My partner and I are in the autumns of our lives.  We are in the process of sorting out memories of decades of life, deciding what to store and what to let go of so that we are not burdened by the weight of life as we move forward.  The image of storing one’s sugars in the roots makes sense.  We can store the wisdom of our life experiences as roots do, wisdom and knowledge that can be drawn on whenever necessary.  Past experiences don’t need to buzz around our heads as unresolved conflicts or burden our hearts as unhealed pain.  The leaves that generated the sugar from photosynthesis will fall away, like the experiences themselves.  But we can take the sugar, the wisdom from them and store that.

As I continue to walk, I can feel all that reserve, that energy below me and I think again of how we access knowledge, wisdom.  We search out facts on-line and listen to the news and other people.  But the earth holds much wisdom in the stones, the roots, the soil and the networks that exist within it, that we can access whenever needed.  We simply need to pay attention, listen and be grateful.  We don’t need to pack our heads full of fears and possibilities that distract us from the present moment.  We can walk on the earth and learn what is needed on a daily basis.  I remember a piece of poetry from a book I am currently reading entitled, If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie.  The poem is by Rainer Maria Rilke and in part says,

If we surrendered

To earth’s intelligence

We could rise up rooted, like trees.

I walk gently on the earth, stopping to touch giant trees as I go, trying to soak up, to breath in, the intelligence all around me and I do feel stronger, more rooted, calmer.   And for this, I am truly thankful.