In the startling simplicity of nature, a few things become apparent:
For most of us, everything is, actually, okay
Quietness is a refuge where what matters clarifies, and what doesn’t falls away
Renewal is often as simple as slowing down
In the busyness of our lives, so much becomes complicated. Yet it turns out we are surrounded by universal medicine: trees, sunlight, water, air, plants, soil, moon, stars, sky. The trappings of our dear and darling Earth. The perfect antidote to our common woes.
After nearly a week of traveling across the world, enduring jet lag, and sharing a miniature space with family, it was a tree beside the house here on the Greek island of Lesvos that granted me the relief I needed.
Under the pine tree, I swear I sensed the breath of Sappho as I listened to the music of its thin, slender leaves. With needles like violin bows, it played the air into a wisping thrum of promise—the lingering echoes of overwhelm leaving with the breeze. It was then that I had what felt like my first good exhale in ages.
Though not quite the same as a hug from a grandma, the canopies of trees still have their own embrace. An ability to help us let things drop away.
I am particularly enchanted by the pine. There is something certain about it. It is precise in its holding, earnest in its aura of calm. Its hypnotic whirring—low and all-encompassing—reminds me of a master sound healer, erasing excess, erasing what is not mine, erasing psychic dust and accumulation.
But I am also enchanted by the fig tree, its flapping leaves and its growing fruit, still hard but weeks away from ripeness, in the last moments of its secret, readying on its own time. And the olive trees with their astonishing fecundity, yielding so much oil that we must give half away. And the strong sturdy oak at the back of the property, giving steadiness, keeping watch, offering shelter from the formidable sun.
Never mind the herd of goats that are our neighbors, and the drove of donkeys just down the way. Especially never mind about the sheep and their little collar bells, or the time we returned home on a starry night only to find a stampede of them huddled together, thick as thieves, one big ringing, chiming sea of cozy white dreams. (!)
I did not set out to write about enchantment, yet here I am, losing my cool.
I suppose that is just the way it is: nature cannot be separated from wonder. Is that because it is the first animation? Life abounds all around us, and with it, our perception of what is already here and what is possible awakens.
Even death turns the ol’ cog wheels. On a visit to the donkeys today, my son and I walked past a tall, dead flower that looked like a petrified skeleton of itself. Its petals had not fallen. The flower did not wilt, in the traditional sense. Instead, it dried up and continued to stand as it once did in its glory days as a chief pollinator. It is a relic of its own dignity.
What I am saying is, it’s never a bad idea to spend some time outside. Regardless of how severe or simple our moment might be, nature remains a crowned angel in our harem of reprieve.
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About the Author:
I’m Sky, a writer, poet, mother, and mentor, and author of A Ceremony Called Life (Sounds True). Transfixed by the things we cannot see, I write mythopoetic essays in protection and reverence of love, eros, and intimacy, which I regard as the very pulse beneath ordinary life. I hope my pieces here will inspire you to live with the ferocious urgency your life deserves, and to love like there is nothing more important in the entire world.
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