“Trees in particular were mysterious and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life. For that reason the woods were the place where I felt closest to its deepest meaning and to its awe-inspiring workings…The tree brings back all that has been lost through Christ’s extreme spiritualization, namely the elements of nature. Through its branches and leaves the tree gathers the powers of light and air, and through its roots those of the earth and the water… You must go in quest of yourself, and you will find yourself again only in the simple and forgotten things. Why not go into the forest for a time, literally? Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books… ”
-Carl Jung
“Only when I walked into the forest did the world become whole again.”
“Sit in the forest long enough and you begin to see through animal eyes. the fog of mindlessness starts to clear and thoughts flow away like water cascading down the mountainsides into the valleys, soaking down into the soil, deep into the earth, to be purified, cleansed, and reborn back into the world. Now you are free.”
“A big moon, waxing, looms overhead. In a few days, it will be a Hunter’s Moon, the first full moon after the Harvest Moon, a reminder of the season. So too is the feel of the crisp air upon the face and the forest preparing for winter. I inhale the familiar smell of the birches mixing with the fire we are building. I hear the rush of
the river outside, competing with the bubblings of familiar voices inside. A big hawk circled in the twilight and I know that bears, wild turkeys, and so many other marvelous creatures are passing around us in the darkness.
This is a moment I want to savor, am determined to savor, while knowing that life is fragile and fleeting. These are troubling times, but if we lose our moments of common humanity, our connection with nature, a sense that there is still so much beauty, we risk losing everything.”
The language that nature uses, how do we touch it, know it? It surely exists on a plane that some access readily, but most humans aren’t close enough to understand.
I love this time lapse video showing the loveliness of mushrooms sprouting from the forest floor, their umbrellas unfurling majestically. It speaks to me, but the language is clearer, louder when I’m the forest itself, listening…. listening.
“Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.”
sing around us in the darkness.
