What We Are Made Of

 

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.