I took this photo a year ago in June along my little trail in the middle of a rainstorm that felt as if it were created by the clouds in my own heart.
I want to bring you to touch soft moss, and witness mysterious lichen as they whisper secrets of survival and resilience to pine and stone. I want them to cast their spells of belonging onto your body and into your mind. To enchant you with their knowing. To let you see their being. (Estimated read time: 1 minute)
I question, then, if landscapes might hold imprints of memory, like repositories of the encounters that have occurred within them, and while we can dance around this understanding academically, we may not be able to address it with the rigor demanded of Western science.
It might be helpful to remember to breathe–that this too is life. It is sketching lines, and erasing lines and building a map of the forest floor of your work that is much more than regurgitated information consumed in haste, and is instead an embodied and relational process full of growth, decay, and regeneration.
The way loss is a mythic eclipse. The way its existence darkens our sun. Grief is existentially terrifying, it consumes like fire, leaves us without breath. It is isolating, disorienting, like a liminal and endless purgatory one must traverse to leave the depths of hell. Only none of the exits are marked. It is an isolating and yet universal fall to the knees.
In times of darkness and chaos, we are called to embrace the Magic—the goddess-stuff that hums beneath the surface, guiding us to create a life that is our own mythological journey. It’s in the midst of struggle that we find the strength to practice self-love, connect with others, and navigate the depths of our being, just like the goddesses and women of ancient tales. (2 minute read)
In the vastness of existence, we often find ourselves grasping for a sense of identity, a singular thread that we can call our own. Yet, as we tug at this thread, we begin to unravel a complex web of interconnectedness that challenges our very notions of selfhood. Where do we belong? Who are we,
really?
It is September, and the berries are black, heavy, sweet (ish), and ripe. The sky is no longer August blue but September blue, and if you look at the sky often enough, you know the difference. Green is fading from the landscape, bits of yellow in its place. The Quaking Aspen leaves take on a new sound despite still appearing green. It’s a hollowness in their susurration (say this spell with me, feel the way it sounds on your lips: susurration). There is a crisp lightness where a heavy lushness used to be. A thinning of their essence.
When things come all the way undone
the light that falls through your window arrives differently.
Although the difference is hard to name
you may stand, haunted
