The Bridge We Make Together

An old tree fallen tree trunk bridges across the center of the photo. It is covered in moss, lichen, and many fungi. Green leafy plants are below the trunk, and other trees surround it.

Today, I want to ask: as we hit mid-August, and days and nights of way-too-hot just about everywhere, how is your heart? How’s your mind, your spirit, your body? 

What’s it like to move through your day? To do what you can to care for yourself, and for those close to you, and maybe even for some farther out circles of beings? How are you finding time and space for all that needs doing? And how about for joy, love, beauty? 

So many questions today, because there are no easy answers (ever, and especially now) - and questions are usually more interesting anyway. The right questions can do all kinds of important things, like bringing us closer together, and inviting exploration, reflection, and connection.

If you’re reading this, you know I’m tending this new practice that supports people in renewing their connection to the earth that made and sustains them. I see the power in this practice - in people feeling invited to be slow outside, to touch leaves, to watch a flying insect with curiosity rather than instant reactivity. I see people move through grief to joy to silliness to quiet contemplation, to any and every other emotion you can imagine. I watch as they remember - we’re all kin, and we all need each other. 

All of this is clear to me. I have the incredible blessing to get to witness these moments every time I’m with folks in the woods, sitting on the ground, smelling the sweet scents of cedar and thimbleberry. What’s less clear to me is how we best care for our human lives, and also for this place that is our bones and blood. How do we act urgently, and also with tenderness, respect, humbleness, and from a place of understanding that we can’t “save the planet” - we can only learn and tend to and care for all of us, all that is us?

I wonder how we hold and not always push away the emotions that come up when the land is burning and the oceans are boiling? Can we hold those emotions, and still show up for our families, friends, and communities? I do see us, in the midst of it all, caring for each other - we make dinner for loved ones, go for walks and bike rides, watch silly movies together, tend to struggling or thriving gardens, find water to sit by or jump in, love our animals through joy and grief, care for people in pain, eat pounds of fresh berries and watermelon, celebrate our loved ones’ successes, and hold them through the hard times. All of this, while reading the news, and sometimes, stepping out our own front door, causes our stomachs to twist and our hearts to break.

I think that maybe we can do all of this, at the same time, because of the questions. Once we believe we know exactly what’s to come for ourselves and for everyone with whom we share this earth, possibility shuts down. Whether we step into a forced-positivity dreamworld, in which everything just works out, without work; or we descend into complete despair, the questions have stopped, the possibilities narrow to just one path. 

The forest reminds us that there’s never just one path, never just one story. The water finds a way around or through that pile of stones, the roots grow tangled over and around the underground boulder, the squirrel finds another way to reach those Doug Fir cones. Young people who have fought for almost a decade for the right to live with clean air and water finally win their day in court.

I thank all of these beings for their reminders that to explore, to try and fail and try again, to hold on to curiosity (if hope is inaccessible), and to stay in relationship - these are the ways we nurture our intertwined lives.

These are the ways we carry forward the charge set for us by all who came before and will come after us: to keep weaving together our questions, our wonderings, our worries born of love, and maybe even our hopes. When we braid them all together, something new (and very old) is created - a hand-knotted bridge from past to future that can hold our weight. We can move across that chasm of just one story, and toward the branching path of many possibilities. We go holding each other up, helping each other cross, asking each other the true questions, and listening deeply for the answers we create together.