The wind in the tall Red Pine canopy was roaring overhead
as Anna entered the forest. It was a low-pitched
sound that created images of a large animal, maybe a dragon, in her
imagination. The roaring sounded wild
and a bit dangerous. This was the kind
of wind that could bring down trees.
On a different kind of a day, she might have played it safe
and stayed at home. But this was not
that kind of a day. This was a day too
full of demands and crises, big and small.
Anna had managed the problems, requested and received help and she had a
plan for what came next. There was no
more she could do now but fret and worry.
Oh, and run through each event over and over again in her mind, checking
the facts and the choices she had made.
She knew that her brain would not shut down on its own. She knew that her body would buzz for hours
on its high of adrenaline and cortisol.
She needed help.
The wind in the tree tops seemed to echo her day that had
felt wild and out of control. “Beyond
here, there be dragons,” is what the old maps said at the edge of unknown
geography. She looked skyward at the
imaginary dragon and thought, rather uncharacteristically, “Bring it on! I can’t let a bit of roaring keep me out of
the forest today.”
Down below, just above the forest floor, there was a stiff
breeze but nothing serious. In fact, the
breeze made it impossible for the mosquitoes who frequented these woods, to
fly. And so, Anna was pestered only by
the buzzing of her own thoughts. She
could hear the crow family cawing loudly to each other from their perches in
the swaying pines. Crows seemed to enjoy
cavorting in the wind, like the sail boarders on the nearby lake. The wind was exciting and those birds and
people exulted in flying with feathers or sails.
The crows became louder and more insistent. Anna craned her neck to look up and saw a
turkey vulture careening wildly in the gusts.
The crows had nothing to fear from the turkey vulture but that didn’t
dissuade them from sharp, insistent warning vocalizations. The turkey vulture caught an updraft and rose
effortlessly away from the chorus of challenging crows.
With her head tilted back, Anna noticed dozens of maple and
ash keys spinning down from where they had grown, high above her. The wind had set these whirling, winged, seed
pods free. Their luxurious, downward,
spiralling journey was hypnotic to watch and she stood motionless taking in the
ancient dance created by air currents and gravity.
Anna let out a long sigh.
Already, the forest was working its magic and distracting her mind from
the deep ruts of worry that she had travelled for so many years. She felt lighter as her attention to the
pirouetting seed keys opened her clenched hands and invited her now free
fingers to carve out spirals in the air A few keys landed on her straw hat and
she became an unknowing accomplice to the wind’s seed spreading work as she began
walking again.
Soon, she came to the river. She made her offering and sang to the river
as she did on every visit. Looking
upriver, she felt a slight tug, an urging, as if something was beckoning to
her. She had learned to listen to these
sensations, so she turned upriver and followed the well-worn footpath. After a few seconds, she looked to her left
and noticed for the first time, a large rock, partially hidden by a fallen tree
trunk. It seemed to light up for the
briefest of seconds, as if by the flash of a camera. That was all the urging she needed and she
strode over to have a look. The stone
was large enough and flat enough to make a good sitting stone. It was grey and pink with black
speckles. As she moved around it, there
were tiny flashes of light from shiny quartz that was embedded in the
stone. Anna thought that maybe it was granite. She knew that granite was an igneous rock,
formed by the cooling of magma and that the pink was feldspar and the black was
mica.
Using her hand, Anna brushed the leaves and twigs from the
surface of the rock and placed her palms on it.
It was still warm from the day’s sunshine. Immediately, she felt calm, as if the buzzing
of her muscles had run down her arms into the stone.
“May I?” she asked, gesturing with one hand to the top of
the stone. Nodding, she added. “Thank you,” and then sat down.
“Aaaaah,” she sighed, as she felt the rest of the buzzing
leaving through her buttocks and feet.
“I needed that. Thank you.” And she gently stroked the side of the warm stone.
“I’ll bet you’ve seen a thing or two in your time,” she
said to the stone beneath her. “If only
you could talk, the stories you could tell,” she murmured as she closed her
eyes.
“Fire!” She heard
the word from somewhere inside herself.
The picture of swirling molten lava appeared behind her closed
eyes. Slowly, the red glow faded and the
lava became grey and solid.
“Water!” the picture
changed to a vast sea, with waves whipped up by the wind, white crests
crashing. The view dropped beneath the
surface of the water to the rocky sea floor.
“Ice!” Suddenly,
there were glaciers moving, pushing giant boulders before them, sculpting the
earth below them as they moved. Then
there was more water, soil building up, plants, trees, frost heaving. The images went on and on.
“You’ve been here since the beginning,” said Anna. “You’ve experienced so much.” From somewhere deep in her memory, she
remembered the words “Mineral Kingdom”.
It occurred to her for the first time that she was made of minerals as
well. Perhaps some of the same minerals
as this granite.
She remembered that someone had said that we were made of
stardust (it may have been Joni Mitchell) and that we were made of the same
minerals as the stars. She smiled. Anna liked this idea of being a part of a
cosmic family, of being related to stars and granite. This knowledge seemed to elevate her simple
existence somehow, knowing that she had come from the Earth and the stars. Someone had said that people are just the expression
of the Universe in the form of humans.
That would make the granite the expression of the universe in the form
of stone and the crows one of the Universe’s avian expressions.
She imagined the minerals withiin her greeting the minerals
in the granite, recognizing each other as kin.
And then she noticed that the boundary between her and the stone was
blurred. She felt her energy field move
into the field of the granite where a slow dance moved to barely audible
music. She imagined her energy field travelling
through space to the stars and dancing with them as well. Then she dropped her awareness through the stone
and the soil to the Earth’s mantle and all the way to its molten core. Anna felt suspended between the Earth’s core
and the stars, part of a cosmic dance.
Her surfaces blurred and she saw herself as millions of twinkling
lights, as if the photons in her DNA were blinking on and off.
Suddenly, the roaring of the trees grew in intensity. The sound filled her ears. It was the sound of a raging sea, it was the
sound of creation, it was the sound of mammoth forces moving in the
Universe. She felt the power of the wind
surge within her and she wondered if she might fly.
The sound of the crows’ warning call snapped her back into
her too solid body and she opened her eyes, scanning for trouble. A tall White Birch was swaying wildly on the
ridge above her. She heard a loud
cracking sound and knew she had seconds to move. Making a quick decision about which way led
to safety, she ran down the path towards the river. The cracking stopped and there was only the sound
of the roaring wind until the tree crashed to the ground behind her. She felt the impact on the forest floor
through her feet. Holding onto a cedar
trunk for support, Anna leaned forward, breathing hard. She could feel her heart banging in her
ears. Gone was the calm, gone was the
elation. Now adrenaline was in charge
again, instructing her heart to beat faster, to raise her blood pressure and
send the precious oxygen-bearing resource to her arms and legs. She was glad of it. This is what had saved her life. This is what adrenaline was designed for when
humans emerged from the lava, water, minerals and sunlight.
Her breathing began to slow and she stood up straight
again. Curiosity now took over and she
turned to examine the wreckage. Where
she had sat moments before, there now lay a large birch tree. Its branches were broken and crumpled and its
leaves still trembled in the breeze. The
trunk had snapped when it hit the granite and birch bark lay strewn about.
Anna knew that it was definitely time to leave the
forest. She stopped to leave an offering
for the granite and the birch and then clambered up the steep embankment to the
trail. It seemed that this was not her
day to die, or at least it wasn’t so far.
The adrenaline and cortisol gave her legs new vigour as her heart pumped
extra oxygen to the muscles. The roaring
above now sounded like two dragons fighting in some kind of cosmic battle. She watched for trees that might be swaying
wildly, just in case. What had felt like
crises earlier in the day were now forgotten.
She was totally in her body and focused on what she was doing.
Up ahead, a tall Maple sapling was bent across the
trail. It had spent it’s energy growing
up and not enough on growing down. In
the high wind, its roots didn’t match the height of the trunk and the
resistance that its leaves gave. She had
to bend low to get underneath the arch of its bowed trunk. She would have to think about the importance
of being grounded once she was safely at home.
Then it struck her. She needed to
bring her awareness into her feet so she could feel what was on the forest
floor as she ran. She had been high up
in her head, fleeing like a scared deer.
It took great effort but she managed to drop into her feet and focus
there.
When she came to a rotted trunk that had fallen across the
trail, she easily jumped over it and continued running. She was breathing hard and she didn’t know
how much longer she could keep up this pace.
And then, for some reason, the memory of being suspended between the
stars and the Earth’s core flashed back to her.
She was a child of Earth, a child of the stars, a child of the
Universe. She visualized exiting the
forest safely and getting to her house.
She asked the forest for safe passage.
It might have been her imagination but it seemed that the roaring
lessened.
And then Anna, child of Earth, stars and the Universe, made
of minerals and sunlight and air walked on the forest trail out to the
road. The problems that she had brought
to the forest community seemed almost insignificant now. She was happy to have them, happy to be alive
and still waiting to fly.
