IN WINTER WOODS.

On Saturday, January 10, 2015, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

A collage of fallen leaves.

 

Seize the day, as they say. My simple aim was toward ancient oaks. A rough strategy for which part of forest park to walk, as winter light would allow, but off the beaten path.

While the path long lost like a lame lament loops back around in time, compounding ancient ground. A ritual, void of intent, a stray arrow loosed and lost in deep thicket.

Sealed through time with tar and cement, yet a single tree is wild and free as one which is one with wilderness. Knowing nothing of ‘nature reserve’, draws endless reserves through earthbound roots.

Returning to the woods on foot, a winter walking meditation, is no mere brisk jaunt to aid the circulation. A turning away within, in the spirit of mindfulness, in respect of our shared destiny, our dignity.

Transforming with intent, the worldly drama and grim pillage, to one of silent pilgrimage. At the turning of an age, in the company of sleeping trees.

A sceptical age prevails all around, proud of the progress we think we’ve found. As if we’d left the past behind, when the myth of progress is in the mind.

The loss of the now is the notion of time, that we’re moving between what’s ahead and behind. “It’s one giant step for humankind”, revoking all stories by which we’re defined.

As now, or so it seems, at some pre-pagan point within the dream, unmindful of the ground beneath our feet, the plot got lost in self-deceit. The wild stag vanished without trace, no wolves’ lament when the last was killed.

Through the woods, shocked silence sings, falls through branches bare of leaves. But for the call of a plaintive wren, in deep gullies of hidden streams.

All language fails while this water sound, is lilting something more profound. Ensnared by delusion that runs so deep, by language locked in perpetual sleep.

These remnant woods hold a presence sublime, our thoughts, an anomalous paradigm. While lyrically and literally, we’re hostages to history.

So, to ramble on, relatively microcosmic as a dust mite, in a living carpet that sees and hears. Not get snagged by low bramble snares that rip. Crunch softly not to startle or alarm, feathered folk in the underbrush, aware, though hidden and unheard.

To pause and stand amazed, listen to the silence deep within, and breathing slow. Stand as one with a dense, intensely vertical maze. Tall, sleek, slender, ground-grasping talons of evergreen. Gaze skyward where top tips touch in cathedral quiet.

To circumnavigate around what a friend later referred to as “the faerie fort”. A group of rocks on an oak-topped mound. Wrapped around with roots and crowned with deep cushioned moss, the way, one could say it was meant to be.

If all of this is holographic then so are we.

Some unseen force did a thorough job, but then, perhaps, it did itself. As is now known and shown, that leaves of plants and trees, feel, hear, speak, and see.

How sensitive are we? Notice how our plunder returns in kind with thunder. All life is one and space is no division, how then treat the sacred with derision?

No space without form. No form without space, and space, so called, is our breath of life. As Dante said of wonder: “Attaining to wonder, seek not further what may be behind it.”

Beyond that, is what we are, we are that, and that is sufficient. At least for now. ~

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Martin Rainbowmaker