The light streams lazily through the branches and leafs overhead; the path the light takes is reflected throughout the forest in a vibrant, living, green hue. There’s an overwhelming feeling of peace as a stray leaf falls to my left, the sound as it touches the thick grass is soft, quiet. Not far to my left a tree stretches above me it’s moss covered trunk stalwart as it reaches past the solace through the thick canvas of green overhead and disappears.
If I were to pick out one aspect of the woods that I couldn’t forget, it would be the quiet pond lapping at my bare feet, the water is cool and welcoming, the reflection of the forest and woods brilliant against the gentle movement of a distant spring. The sounds in the forest drown each other out; it’s difficult to pick a single sound over another, the sound of birds, the sound of the water moving, the sound of a distant breeze whose delicate touch occasionally dances over the skin just to remind you that you’re alive.
I want you to feel, see, smell, and taste the whole experience as I remember it, to know how it feels to have the air heavy with life, the grass thick underneath you with not a twig or unwelcome weed within sight. There’s a solitude that comes from not having to push the bugs away, or fight for room to be heard. As my hands open and close at my sides I feel the thick undergrowth, like a blanket of grass it holds me, nearly weightless as I lay with my feet at the waters edge. The slope of the bank leads gently into the water, the grass grows several feet down past the bank so that even with my feet in the water I can feel the weightless sensation of such a thick and wonderful mattress of life.
My eyes close and I take a deep breath, the air is perfect, not too hot, and not too cool, but as I breath deep the best sensation I can give to describe the air that flows into my lungs is chilled, not like from a freezer, but from a garden, as if the forest took my exhaled sigh and in return has breathed life into me. My mind is alert as it drifts from one suddenly less important thought to another. There is peace with life; there is solace in the green. My hand reaches out, I am not alone and the feeling of fingers twining in mine gives me first a pause, then a smile, and then I realize that I am whole and time stops.
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