there are only a few people out, not enough to be annoying, so i let my armor dissolve.
it is warm enough that i don't need gloves. in fact, after walking up the steep hill to the trail, i want to strip down to my underwear and soak my skin. the forest drips with diamonds, raindrops collecting around blossoms and at leaf tips. the lake is a still mirror for the sky and the trees. mist--rogue wisps of clouds--dances across hilltops and settles in tiny valleys.
the shades of green are myriad, like lush quilts of textured emerald hues, from the black-green of old oaks to the bright new sprouts at the trail sides--leaves shaped like moths, wings flat and round-tipped. i want to graze on that green, taste the moisture on my tongue and feel juicy fibers crunch between my molars. vines of ivy climb down the sides of the ravine to my right, tangling with slender switches and reaching towards the fuzzy moss that blankets nearly everything that sits out of the sunlight's reach on brighter days.
the smell is like coming home: decaying leaves, wet earth, native herbs.
if i can't take off my shirt, i'll roll up my sleeves. the rain is soft, tiny kisses by the millions. every nerve ending in my epidermis gets a massage. a strand of wet hair points to the corner of my mouth and i let it stay.
the rain begins to come down faster, and the thick hush of the forest is interrupted with soft, sweet percussion.
the walnut trees, skinny, multiple trunks growing out of one base, arc up and over the trail, reaching to the water's edge. i stop there, too, feet in the wet sand and eyes skimming the surface to find the geese i can hear, honking in approval or in disapproval, i can never tell. veils of rain descend, bringing water and landscape closer to the same colorless color.
there is a flickering in my periphery and i look up to see a falcon slicing across the sky. i know she is not a vulture, her movements are quicker and her tail long and slender. the buzzards are out, too, a few of them, their wings lovingly caress the sky when they move, sensuous and slow. they are enormous birds, so regal, but their ugly, bare heads betray the bad karma bestowed upon them, perhaps from an earlier life. they seem to accept their fate with grace, and i quickly say a prayer that i might do the same when i begin to get ugly.
i lift my arms up to stretch, arching back in a bend that opens my ribs and reverses the heaviness of my shoulders. it's amazing how, when i make a conscious effort at awareness, i can feel the electric current running up from the earth into my feet and up my spinal column, dispersing like little lightning bolts through the conduits of my nervous system. even in this cool rain, i am sparked, hot, outward-reaching. time is obliterated and there is only here and now, though i'll have to return to a place of clocks eventually. it isn't doing that nourishes the human soul...it is being.
it is warm enough that i don't need gloves. in fact, after walking up the steep hill to the trail, i want to strip down to my underwear and soak my skin. the forest drips with diamonds, raindrops collecting around blossoms and at leaf tips. the lake is a still mirror for the sky and the trees. mist--rogue wisps of clouds--dances across hilltops and settles in tiny valleys.
the shades of green are myriad, like lush quilts of textured emerald hues, from the black-green of old oaks to the bright new sprouts at the trail sides--leaves shaped like moths, wings flat and round-tipped. i want to graze on that green, taste the moisture on my tongue and feel juicy fibers crunch between my molars. vines of ivy climb down the sides of the ravine to my right, tangling with slender switches and reaching towards the fuzzy moss that blankets nearly everything that sits out of the sunlight's reach on brighter days.
the smell is like coming home: decaying leaves, wet earth, native herbs.
if i can't take off my shirt, i'll roll up my sleeves. the rain is soft, tiny kisses by the millions. every nerve ending in my epidermis gets a massage. a strand of wet hair points to the corner of my mouth and i let it stay.
the rain begins to come down faster, and the thick hush of the forest is interrupted with soft, sweet percussion.
the walnut trees, skinny, multiple trunks growing out of one base, arc up and over the trail, reaching to the water's edge. i stop there, too, feet in the wet sand and eyes skimming the surface to find the geese i can hear, honking in approval or in disapproval, i can never tell. veils of rain descend, bringing water and landscape closer to the same colorless color.
there is a flickering in my periphery and i look up to see a falcon slicing across the sky. i know she is not a vulture, her movements are quicker and her tail long and slender. the buzzards are out, too, a few of them, their wings lovingly caress the sky when they move, sensuous and slow. they are enormous birds, so regal, but their ugly, bare heads betray the bad karma bestowed upon them, perhaps from an earlier life. they seem to accept their fate with grace, and i quickly say a prayer that i might do the same when i begin to get ugly.
i lift my arms up to stretch, arching back in a bend that opens my ribs and reverses the heaviness of my shoulders. it's amazing how, when i make a conscious effort at awareness, i can feel the electric current running up from the earth into my feet and up my spinal column, dispersing like little lightning bolts through the conduits of my nervous system. even in this cool rain, i am sparked, hot, outward-reaching. time is obliterated and there is only here and now, though i'll have to return to a place of clocks eventually. it isn't doing that nourishes the human soul...it is being.
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