Experiencing the Cycle of Life While Doing Walkabouts

Impromptu Altar

I’ve been thinking about altars in nature a lot lately and have been making my own when I come across locations that seem as though they are holding sacred space. Since that is at the forefront of my mind, I find myself glancing into hollowed trunks and other potentially appropriate places I might have overlooked in the past. How wonderful it was to discover this impromptu altar on the Mountain to Sea Trail with its smooth rocks, greenery, acorns, and fading fresh flowers. I happened not to have any sacred objects with me on this particular hike, but perhaps I’ll go back with some soon. It made me so happy to see that others were making altars too. There is spirit in each fragment of the natural world and celebrating it any time is auspicious.

Life and Death, Mountain To Sea Trail

Staring at the ground has become it’s own meditation and so helpful in keeping me focused and sane while providing support for my mother and other loved ones. Yet it is not just grounding. If you stare at any inch of the earth, you can see life and death coexisting at the same moment and an infinite number of stages of being and pattern. The interconnectedness of it all is so apparent. Perhaps I’ll chart what is happening beneath the pretty pattern-the vectors, tension, and ensuing unification. I am grateful knowing that this beautiful earth is willing to support us, even and perhaps especially in the midst of chaos.

Burled Trunk, Mountain To See Trail

This perhaps is one of my most favorite trees along this trail. It is incredibly unique and graceful at the same time, and not afraid to shine its own light. We are not all the same, nor should we be. And the scars we form in response to the challenges we face are not something to be ashamed of and in fact can bestow us with our own unique beauty and defining characteristics.

Sometimes things do all fall apart, and this is necessary for new life and paradigms to be created. Even the destruction can be imbued with its own beauty though and what collapses and becomes subsumed by the earth is not wasted. Just like the Phoenix, the living organisms on the forest floor create life after they destroy it and the canopy rises again.

Yet, unless we can realize how to preserve our ecosystems better, the protective power of the forests will lessen and lessen. When I came upon this burl, I instantly thought of Munch’s painting “The Scream.” Whenever I walk in forest, I cannot help but try to tune into their health. I live in a relatively unspoiled place, but nowhere on the planet is safe because air and water currents are global and water systems are intensifying. Though strewn flowers, apple-green moss, or the patterns created by intertwined branches might be more pleasing and definitely deserve being appreciated, we have to heed the forest’s cries of warning. The trees are our sentinels.