on the earth

Get off the highway for a minute. Get off the illusion-world's agenda for a space. Get off the clock for a few degrees of sun's arc through lapis sky.

Listen to the conversation between wind and ponderosa, until it comes through clearer than all the other conversations in your head. And the conversation mostly consists of this: SSSHHHHHH...

Let the lessons arrive for a minute, instead of constantly seeking them out. Read every science in the life around you. In the chaos, in the fractals, in the perfectly disordered complexity. Hear every hymn in the hum of bees, wildflowers, silence. Every question can be resolved with the variable of YOU entered into the equation of this place. Every. Only, you usually have to show your work. Sometimes lately, that work has been of the hardest kind. Offering. Releasing. Subtracting. Waiting. Accepting. Sometimes it's much more simple: put your feet on the ground and watch resolution arrive.

Sit on the earth, still, supported, till you feel it turning under you once again. Like a passenger riding smooth seas on a sturdy, unsinkable ship. Like graceful flight on a giant bird's back, secure between its wings. Stand your ground with the pines until they remind you how they do it: their feet aren't on the earth, they're in it. Sifting it while it subsists them. Breaking it down, while it holds them up. Branches lifted in constant gratitude to light.

The (most recent) (human) name of this mountain range is Sangre de Cristo. There was a time when I had to concern myself with how different minds processed this name, and all its historical associations. Now, I just try to watch where my own feet are going. And remember that I too am only recent, and human. Locally/colloquially, the mountains are also called "the Sangres". This is easy to grasp. These mountains are my blood. They run through my veins, even when they slip my memory, because of the transfusion of life they gave me 13 years ago. Their generosity helped save my life, when it was hanging by its last most precarious thread of hope. Their unconditional presence gave me back my ground, when I had almost faded out of the physical dimension. Their effortlessly sustained green and their constant calling of the thunder recalled life to my flickering soul. For this I have to come back to them, not often as might be but often enough. To give thanks, yes. To participate in their constant give and take of life, more so.