An experience of the vast harmony of nature during self-led forest bathing, shared by Viv Hawkins.
There among the old-growth redwoods of northern California. Massive. Towering. The tallest trees on this awe-inspiring planet.
We had been on this trail before today. And I had been on it for some time that day.
And then, out of the blue, it hit me.
An immense gratitude for these beings. Helping to balance the simultaneously resilient and fragile ecosystems on which we and all life on earth depend. Breathing in what we breath out. Standing here for centuries, growing both taller and wider in circumference. So tall they need to drink from both their roots and their foliage that catches clouds.
Scarred by fire how many times?! Fire sometimes caused by human activity, whether that be setting the fire inadvertently or not offering the controlled burn care practiced by Indigenous people before colonizers tried to suppress all natural fire.
Alive even in their death after their shallow roots, intertwined with others of their species surrounding them, give way and the giant topples BOOMING. How does that koan go? If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there to hear, does it make a sound? I have no doubt they do.
My feet feel the shudder still vibrating in the ground beneath the silent softness of redwood needles and cones as small as grapes, each containing countless seeds of giants.
Even fallen, they give, as their bodies are offered up to sword fern spores and sorrel seeds, that explode from fruit which forms from the sorrel flower, only the leaves of which I’ve seen.
I stood there with tears streaming down my face, my heart as full as I’ve known it, and a gratitude that I sensed was MASSIVE but, at the same time, could never somehow match the scope of these trees in size, abundance, longevity, or criticality to the ecosystem of which they, no we, are together a part.
In that HUGE love I experienced the wonder of the universe; the incomprehensible, mysterious, complexity of life; the grace that surrounds us every single moment; and a sense of connectedness to All-in-All.
mystical friend 