Nature: The Greatest Life Coach, Goal Captain, Drill Sargeant & Explorer of the Heart and Spirit
“This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.”
Terry Tempest Williams
It was a long time between cries in nature, I thought, as I stood on the edge of a bridge and relaxed enough to let the tears flow. The only witnesses to my tears were the native trees and plants in the riparian forest outside Visalia, a small town about an hour from my home in Bakersfield.
This was just a tiny slice of my time exploring in the Kaweah Oaks Preserve, a protected landscape managed by the Sequoia Riverlands trust.
It riparian woodland that lives alongside a river or a stream. It is a forest that often times connects less ecologically rich areas. It is a forest that takes care of itself and the animals, insects and plants that live among it. It is like a living breathing intentional community without any humans holding planning meetings or making sure control and order are maintained.
Such things - planning meetings, control-freakism, hierarchy - are irrelevant in this setting.
This bridge is the precise spot along the trail where my tears begin to flow. Perfect: a dry creekbed needed my tears, perhaps, as much as I needed to cry in wonder
Riparian forests also mean my heart gets swollen when I walk among the trees even when the water stops running due to drought. Riparian woodlands echo and remind me of my life experience. I’ve been studying the brochure since I got home. I’ve been holding onto yet sharing the photos because it felt that good to be out there, even for only ninety minutes!
I feel more deeply connected to myself and the world now because of those measly ninety minutes.
Tears like these seem to come without provocation probably because the nudge is so deep it is invisible.
They usually come during solitude, when the space is there to completely experience the presence of the plants and wildlife and myself. Because they are the only companions, the seduction is slow and earthy. The lust for roots and soil and cumulous clouds aren’t interfered with by needing to make sure any humans who are with you are comfortable or content: my usual m.o.
I’m a busy artist mom who has a tendency to think I can’t do much with my “free time” when the kids are off at school. My mini-adventure/field trip/retreat reminded me there is plenty of time to do whatever I need to do to restore my spirit.
Once again, the tears come. The ones on the bridge were awe-filled tears. These are ridiculously happy tears. My next tears may be “are you kidding me?” tears but they are all straight from my gut and my heart and my deep knowing that everything is exactly as it should be.
Questioning, exploring and experiencing my walking back and forward and in seemingly endless loop-de-loops is exactly where I should be.
=====
Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming Spring, 2014 and beyond.
Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot
Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)
Follow on Instagram
And naturally, on Pinterest, too!
