Magic in the Morning Mist

The pigeon gray clouds hang so low over the trees that it seems to be raining and yet it isn’t really rain at all.  The water droplets would have to fall to be classified as rain and these are suspended in the air like a freeze frame in a film.  She can feel them on her face as she walks through the forest. Her glasses get wet and misty at the same time and it looks from her view point, as if she is walking underwater.  And yet she isn’t.  It is the kind of a day when one things seems like another.  A good day to cross over from this world to the Otherworld.  A good day for magic.

She can see the upright purplish grey trunks of the White Pines and the reddish brown trunks of the Red Pines, living in their plantation rows.  They reach up into the sky after nearly one hundred years of growing.  Their crowns are green but she can’t see up there with the brim of her hat in the way.  Even if she could, they would disappear in the low hanging mist.  No matter, she knows they are up there without looking. 

Her feet rise and fall on the spongy ground made soft from years of pine needles falling, decomposing, becoming soft soil, and covering up the sand that used to blow wildly in this very spot. You wouldn’t know it, to look at the forest now, that it wasn’t always a forest.  You might wonder why the trees were planted in rows, but you wouldn’t know the worst of it, the insanity of it all.  Nor would you know that for millennia until two hundred years ago, this land was all forest, stream and lake and sometimes ice.  You wouldn’t know that people lived here in harmony with the land for thousands of years, until the settlers came and brought their trauma, their pain, their mindsets.  The newcomers saw the forests as timber to be taken, seemingly without end.  They saw the trees as taking up farm land, as getting in the way of producing food.  They didn’t see the food that lived in the forest.  They hadn’t the eyes or the imagination needed for that.  Perhaps there was a kind of mist in their minds.

And so, they cut all the trees down.  It took one hundred years to cut and burn it all, but hardworking and determined, they created their vision, their dream of wide open spaces, like the spaces they knew back home.  They felt victorious in their battle with the wild, until their dream became a nightmare.  It turned out that burning  all that wood on the land killed the soil.  It turned out that the soil was sandy and no good for crops.  Once the trees weren’t there to hold it down, the sand blew away in the wind.  And most of the new farmers blew away as well leaving a barren plain behind them.

It wasn’t until people with vision, people who had a different mindset, started to plant new trees, that the idea caught on.  The trees would stabilize the soil and bring back the animals and plants.  And people, people like herself could walk under the trees once more.  That was a hundred years ago. 

A hundred years seems a very long time to a human and then again nothing at all to the rocks and stones that had been there from the beginning.  There is a house foundation made of stacked stones that is still in place just along the path.  She passed it as she came into the forest earlier.  She passed the piled up “field stones” that had been cleared from the deforested land that was then called fields, by hands long gone.  The stones are still where they were placed, but covered by moss now.  They must have stories to tell.

Just past the pile of field stones, she passes the trailing Ground Ivy that was brought by the early settlers to use for colds and as an early Spring green.  They must have welcomed its arrival with joy after a long winter eating root vegetables.  The ivy curls and climbs just as its other names, Gill-go-over-the-ground and Robin-run-over-the-hedge describe.  But no one honours it anymore.  It is called alien and invasive when it covers lawns with its sinister name of Creeping Charlie.  She favours the name Catspaw that describes the shape of each beautiful leaf.  She asked the Catspaw’s permission to pick some for her own use and the answer was an enthusiastic “yes!”  She laid down her own offering in reciprocity and picked some to dry for tea and some to add to her supper.  She thanks this Ground Ivy for the magic of turning the forest floor into food for her, of alchemizing dead leaves into green nourishment with the help of the sun and rain.

Then she walks on down the pine-lined path.  The mist is shifting or perhaps it is her own movement that bring things into and out of view.  It is so quiet.  Maybe the mist is soaking in the sound like a sponge.  The air feels soft and gentle around her, like an embrace.  She can hear the whisperings of the trees as they communicate with each other.  This is her community.  This is where she feels at home. 

She stops to rub her fingers over the needles of a young Balsam tree and then breathes the resin deep into her lungs. This medicine will help her immune system to be strong and she is grateful for it.  The bright smell turns into a colour in her mind.  Yellow.  And the colour turns into a note.  She sings the note back to the Balsam and her energy field joins with that of the tree.  The waves dance as they intersect.

High up above her head, above even the tree tops, Raven groaks.  She lifts her head but can only see grey mist.  No matter, she knows it is Raven and she can picture the bird soaring.  Her mind takes flight as well. She remembers the Ravens at the Tower of London that she saw as a child.  Their presence was said to protect the kingdom from ruin.  She remembers the Ravens she met in the Rocky Mountains and those in Kaslo, BC and on Salt Spring Island.  She remembers the Ravens over Georgian Bay.  Ravens are magic carriers, light bearers, tricksters.  Raven groaks again but closer this time and she becomes more alert.  Something is up.

She closes her eyes and sends her awareness out, scanning in the mist.  She senses a presence behind her to the left.  Turning to face the direction of the presence, she opens her eyes and squints into the mist through her wet glasses.  Her eyes don’t see very well anymore and she relies more on her other senses to navigate.  She feels something approaching.  It is a very alert presence, but nothing to be afraid of.  She opens her heart and sends out love.  She thinks that she can hear the soft rhythm of walking, but perhaps it is a trick of the mist and her old ears. 

But no, there in the greyness something moves.  The mist swirls and the mover comes in and out of view.  She can make out the canine features and slow loping gait as it gets closer.  There is no wind to send scents to announce her so the coyote stops as soon as he sees her.

She smiles and sends more love to this forest dweller.  The coyote stands still, staring at her, sniffing the air.  He is as curious as she and they lock eyes.  She can feel a wave of energy like an infinity loop going to the coyote and coming back.  Her senses are wide open, taking in information.   Then, the coyote sits down, still looking at her and he yawns.  Perhaps, he is part dog and is using the yawn to calm her down.  Coyotes came to this part of Canada from the west about one hundred years ago.  Not only had the settlers destroyed the forests, but they hunted the Eastern Wolves and decimated their population.  This left a void that was filled by the Western Coyotes who amazingly interbred with the remaining Eastern Wolves.  This union resulted in a new hybrid that was later called the Eastern Coyote.  Some of these animals also bred with dogs. 

She decides to believe the yawn and she backs up a few inches until her back is resting on an old Eastern Hemlock trunk.  She slowly slides her back down the trunk until she lands rather ungracefully into a sitting position at its base.  She is, as it happens at the edge of a precipice.  The river runs about eighty feet below and she can hear it singing.  The Hemlock is holding the bank in place, defying gravity and erosion.  And now it supports her as well.  She feels the energy sinking into its roots and she joins with it.

 She has been watching the coyote the whole time, honouring its presence with her attention.  There is a whole world, there in the space between them. And also, connection.  She can imagine a gossamer strand between the coyote and herself and other strands between the coyote and the mice, rabbits and moles that he has fed on.  And the plants that those animals ate and the sun that gave them the energy to grow and the rain.  And then, back to the mist that is swirling gracefully as a slight breeze comes up. She knows in her bones, that there is enough room here for all of them.  She feels herself as part of a web of life.  She can see the lines of light that connect them all; the trees, the birds, the plants, the insects, the coyote and herself.  She feels held by the web.  She just needs to be herself.  She just needs to be in relationship with each of these lives and she knows how to do that.  Coyote is being coyote and she is being herself.  Could it really be that simple?

And then coyote bows his head.  She bows hers as well.  When she looks up, coyote is gone, back into the mist.  It is as if he was never there.  But something has changed.  She can feel a sense  of place.  She, child of settlers, heiress to destruction, has been taken in.  Alien just like the Ground Ivy, just like coyote, she lives here.  But not to dominate, not to control, like her ancestors.  No, she has to learn a different way of being here.  And the forest is her teacher as are the people that have been here for millennia who remember how to live in harmony. 

She feels a little dizzy and she leans into the Hemlock  for support.  Once again, Hemlock sends her energy down into Earth and advises looking deep inside for wisdom.  She closes her eyes and travels deep inside of herself, to her place of knowing.  And there, the searching stops, the vertigo calms and she becomes still, held by the web.