In Grace I Go, I'm Gone

Always beginnings, always endings. Here is the last of "SonomaThoughts." I had to have an ending, or did this ending have to have me? Sometimes the experiences come to me and the words through me. Are they really mine? I like to think no. These words belong to the place, a place and all it's four legged, and winged inhabitants, all that nourished my senses and spirit and still nourishes my soul.
These woods, some part of me is still in relationship with, through memory and dreams, where I visit again.

Mirrors of Life and Death

I frequent two trees in a wood that stand amongst trees of more grandeur. These trees stand unsuspected, but are guides to my soul, holding memories that nourish the essence of who I am. Fallen bark creates a seat upon the forest carpet, where the two merge, meeting ground. One day after meditating under their reach, I slowly stand, turn to give thanks when a small bird flutters into the branches above. After dropping a green acorn, he dives down and begins pecking furiously. He halts his frenzied pursuit, stopping to assess me. He leaves me alone, with a cracked-open green acorn and his contagious playfulness. “New life” I think to myself as my mouth curls towards a smile.

After a good rain, the sun clears the way for a visit to the wood. I leave the sunlight in the meadows and journey in. I see something below the greener of the two trees, white and curving up through the forest floor. I unearth a deer skull. What lives inside still moves. I see it as a gift and leave it beneath the tree, with hope the remaining rainy season will rinse it out until hollow.I sit below these small trees, listen and learn the rhythms these woods breath. I rise and witness for the first time after months of visiting, that these joining trees are a joining of life and death. The dead tree, with it's broken trunk holds blossoming yellow coral fungus, and joins with a tree that breaths through green leaves and acorns.

Yesterday I discovered, beneath the trees’ reaches, feathers from tail and wing, varying shades of gray, with some feathers still holding to the others, spread upon the forest carpet. They escape the breezes that could cause their gentle carry. I gather them into a pile and watch them stir as the air encourages their movement.

I have met other trees in these woods. Givers of edible treasures, born from the soil shared by their roots. Trees for climbing that hold me so steadily in their open arms that aim towards the sky. I can close my eyes and remember those trees with cascading canopies that veil naked bodies from the open meadow.

There is the Great Grandmother Madrone who must bare hundreds of rings within her, and a lipped opening that resembles that of a woman's. Along her thick trunks, her skin peels back, allowing the rain to illuminate her moist yellow, orange and red underneath.

Intimacy with a place goes deeper than words can reveal. To know her stillness, her bird song, her hawks’ cries, her hummingbirds’ wings and her vultures with their soundless thermal gliding. To be still enough where the inhabitants do not mind your quiet witnessing. This pair of eyes can see her gifts on offer, off the beaten path. Maybe a place can feel it’s own aliveness as it moves around you, and through you. I return to the dividing trees, this marriage that holds one one
answer to embracing change. A tree from the yesterdays, decaying but feeding what lives inside it and the life that surrounds it, joins with the tree who holds the trees of the tomorrows in shells waiting to be opened.