Unbinding our wildness (our grief and joy)
Small mushrooms grow from the side of a log on the ground. Furry green moss covers the log, and brown leaves surround it.
It’s in the forest that we can rediscover our wildness. Where everyone from little child to elder can play, and hunt for mushrooms, and inhale leaves, needles, and moss. We build homes for the fairies from twigs and lichen and stones.
If we let it, something is unleashed there, set free from the binds of everyday life.
In the forest, we can crack open. From that crack, out pours laughter, tears, delight, and an eye and ear that are finely attuned to the magic that surrounds us.
I see this wildness emerge for people every time we go to the land together. Sometimes it’s almost a shock - the stunning beauty of the world that’s so easy to overlook when we rush through it all. There’s surprise and joy when people discover the multitudes one tree contains. And there’s often a startling at the depths of emotion their own hearts hold, emotion that was waiting just below the surface to be known.
I can’t count the number of times that tears fill someone’s eyes; the times, “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m so emotional,” is choked back. I often don’t know the intimate details of all that each person is carrying. What I do know is that simply slowing down, and being quiet for a few moments, surrounded by the beauty, and the life and death of the forest, offers an opening, and an invitation to be held.
Western culture hasn’t taught us well how to hold any intense emotion. We’re trained to trade joy and connection for a quick hit of entertainment and stimulation. While I love to be entertained, I know that when I’m filling every moment with information and stimulus, I lose something important.
I lose access to the wildness of what’s real.
Grief and sorrow are wild. They’re held within each of us, often kept contained and hidden away. They’re too wild, too big. If we let them free, what havoc might they wreak?
When we go to the land, when we’re surrounded by what’s real, by all that we depend on to live - sometimes grief and pain finally break free.
They are wild, and they can’t be contained forever, and the forest beckons them forth.
But this beckoning is done with care, and even gentleness. Can a towering tree be gentle? Can wind through branches be tender? I think so. In fact, I know so - I’ve seen it time and time again. I’ve seen breaking hearts held by elder kin, by the beauty and undeniable presence of the forest.
Wildness can’t be tamed forever, but these wild beings (grief, pain, sorrow) can be tended by the strong and sturdy ones.
The truth of our lives on this planet is love and loss and grief. Rather than turning always from this truth, the forest calls to us to remember, and to be deeply cared for in that remembering.
During this time that so many of our hearts are called to memories of our beloved dead, I offer this invitation and reminder: that the earth below us, the sky above, the water that flows through our land and veins, and the fire that lives in the center of us all are here to support and guide us. They have seen and been it all: the joy, the pain, the death, birth, life and living.
We are surrounded by care and love, if we can just remember to turn toward it. We are surrounded by beings and forces that don’t fear our wildness, aren’t afraid of any extreme of emotion and experience.
Our sudden tears are welcome in the forest. Our joy and delight are welcome in the forest. Our wildness, and our need for rest and comfort are welcome. We can bring it all there, and discover how to let our wildness run and climb and fly. And we can settle down in the coziest of dens, when and as we need to.
In this season in which the dead gather close, I offer the words of Francis Weller in The Wild Edge of Sorrow:
“Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close.”
The trees know this sisterhood well - they carry it in their bodies and roots. When we walk with them, and nestle in amongst them, we can find our way back to this remembering, too.
