Awe is only possible here
Pointing ourselves toward the world (the children know how)
The other morning I went for a walk early, before the busy streets and busy mind and busy inbox and busy everything. It was the time of cool softness and sweet light and creatures finding food. The few humans out and about spoke quietly because that’s what you do in the early hours. This walk was meant to be a jog because my mind said, be healthy, be strong, be different than you are.
Instead body and spirit and heart (my own and those of the beings around me) stopped me in my tracks. It never did become a jog - barely even a walk. It was instead a wander with eyes and heart wide and all of me permeable to everything, soaking it in with wonder at the heart-clenching miracle of it all.
The busy had trickled in a bit, before. I think I washed last night’s dishes instead of stepping outside first thing. Instead of stepping right outside to say good morning to the big Blue Spruce, Shekhinah, who lives in the front yard1, I did Productive Things, because sometimes it feels like failing if I don’t. Instead of greeting each direction and sending my gratitude and blessings to all the beings who live out that way, each way, I stayed inside being Responsible. Instead of touching the earth, and talking to the plants, and thanking my ancestors and kin and myself for this life, I washed some dishes (or maybe cleaned the litterboxes, or answered some emails?). Hard to say what exactly, but I was, somehow, Productive.
So when I went outside finally to jog, I made it to the entrance of the lovely park near my home and I paused - for just a moment I thought. A moment to notice and say hello to the world. But that moment came right into me, the newborn light filtering through my eyes and skin; the crow nearby hop-dancing along; the stalks and stems all around bending with the light air moving. I understood what it is to be struck.
I was awestruck by the crow. I stood in wonder at the sunlight through the Linden leaves, at the bees and wasps gathering pollen from the big wild flowers that had called them in with sweetness. I couldn’t understand - literally couldn’t make sense of - how everything all around could be so very incredibly beautiful and so shockingly alive.
My mind kept skipping and jittering, bumping up against the impossibility of everything. Thoughts that can’t quite be words but something like, Here from this planet is crows - Crows a shining calling blackness crossing sky and road - From this place is purple - a color I see - with eyes! A color of flowers! Flowers a vital aliveness of food for their winged lovers - lovers embraced within flower body, covered in food/soon-to-be-seeds.
I circled around and around this urgent question: is this is the only place that holds crow and bee and flower and silver shining Linden leaves, in all the universe? Is that true? Is that right? Only here (as far as we know)? Is this a thing I know - that we are the very only place in a vast universe that gave birth to hostas and ants and cars and pine needles and swings and homes and beings of any and every kind?
I couldn’t, for this little while, completely believe or remember if this was true. I couldn’t hold it in my mind. This couldn’t be the really only place (that we know of), could it? The really only place of -
Cedar and Fir, Oak and Maple, Sequoia too
Also wind through them
Doors
Paths
Lamposts
Crying child cradled in soft, strong arms
Teachers
Blankets
Goldenrod
A rock skipping across the river 1, 2, 3, 4 times as sunlight glints the tiny waves
Daughter holding her dying father’s hand as the ICU quiets for the night
Books
Apricots and strawberries
A passerby helping an unknown elder to cross the street
Bus driver saying each stop so riders can find their way
Owls
Bioluminescence
Sobbing
Laughing
Kissing
Cold cloths for feverish foreheads
Food lovingly prepared (food hatingly prepared for that matter)
Dancers and drummers in the park
Candles in the window and braided bread
Cat curled in a basket
Seahorses and pangolins and rhinoceroses (!?)
Wedding serenades and singalongs
Backyard potions stirred by a child’s hand
Reading Andrea Gibson to a beloved dog, together in a hammock
Berries in a basket, juice smeared on little hands and lips
Wings, Fins, Paws, Hands
Vast being underground whose body is brain is body expanding
Kelp forest, rain forest, boreal forest, every forest
I could go on and on. For us living here our world is essentially infinite, infinite in its complexities and simplicities, its vastnesses and tinies, its richness and possibility.
Every single forest, every single being and thing we know and love and hate, all of the fear and love and joy and sorrow and silliness - all of it, as far as we know, is here, only here in the entire breathgiving and breathtaking universe.
Awe is only possible here, in this one place out of everywhere.
Maybe I stumbled into this awe-filled morning thanks to spending time this week with grieving young ones (it’ll make sense I promise).
Circled up together in Dougy Center’s2 backyard, under a canopy for shade (and coziness), we talked about nature, held and looked at nature, and listened too. These young people, hearts holding grief far too young, are thoughtful, funny, and brilliant.
When I asked them what nature even is, what that word means, they said, “nature is just like humans, trees make seeds to make more of themselves, just like humans make babies. We’re all the same really.” Another said, “nature is everything, we’re nature, because everything is made from this planet, even if humans made it.”
They knew what so many of us forget, that humans aren’t separate from some imagined thing or place called ‘nature’. We are of this place, of the land and water and air and soil that give us life. These children knew as they held stones and dried flowers and seashells and fir cones in their hands, as they brought them to their noses to smell and to their ears to listen, that all of this is them, is us.
These sweet ones, they even tried out a little game I learned from Bird by Bird3. Here’s how you do it: ask the group to get really quiet (believe it or not, kids can do this!), then, when you hear a bird (or anything interesting), you silently point toward the sound. That’s it. It’s so simple, and it’s (like so many simple things) magic. Suddenly, in the city, you’re surrounded by birds! Birds that were surely not there a moment before!
Of course (spoiler), the birds were there, we just couldn’t hear them when we weren’t really listening. I’ve had many a Forest Bather say something along the lines of, “we’re a really noisy species you know?” Humans do make a lot of noise, and it becomes nearly impossible to hear everyone else when we’re so damn loud.
So much of what I invite in with folks, is just about getting a little quiet. We get quiet, and we let our body slow down, and we let our heartbeat settle, and we let our breath get deeper. Very soon after, we hear the world.
After we listened around us for a while, I asked them to listen inside, to their very own hearts. To listen in for something that wants to be known. On paper embedded with seeds, they wrote the message they heard, then planted it in dark, rich soil. Who knows what will grow from these seeds? Some dreamed of a tree, or a cat, or their own name written across leaves. I don’t know exactly what will grow, but when asked what they’ll take from our time together, one who’d kept silent up until then said, “Calmness. I’m taking calmness with me.”
This is it really. Calm and awe, and hands touching what’s real.
As I walked that morning, I became permeable. Instead of soaking up simulated colors and sounds and data, I became permeable to air, and light, and the calls of flowers and crows. Maybe the kids did too, in that backyard under a canopy.
If you, too feel the call to be productive, to produce something, prove you’re worth something, I wonder if, just now and then, you could instead listen for that deeper call. The one calling you back home. I wonder if you could point yourself in that direction. The one that lets awe in. Because when we offer just a bit of time and attention to the world, they show right up.
May you find yourself, sometime soon, permeable too, to the awe of this impossible planet. The only place we all are, in everywhere.
Offerings and events
Next weekend (7/26) is Forest Bathing for Queer, Trans and Gender Expansive folks. If you need a little dose of quiet and slow in your Pride month, come spend some time with the trees.
Shapes of Nature begins soon, and there are few spots left. We’ll hold our own and each other’s grief with care. We’ll explore the landscape of grief with help from the more-than-human world and gentle, accessible writing practices.
Grief Care tends to you and your grief, with lots of support from the green ones, tarot, and more.
All of my offerings include financial access options - please don’t hesitate to use this support!
Antidotes and seeds
Here’s one of the reasons I don’t use AI (Their Water Taps Ran Dry When Meta Built Next Door, from the NY Times). “A data center like Meta’s, which was completed last year, typically guzzles around 500,000 gallons of water a day.” Want to stop google from returning results with an AI summary at the top? Type your search phrase and add ‘-ai’ at the end. This is the only reliable method I’ve found. Please let me know if there are better options!
Listen to this interview with Brown Hope’s CEO cameron whitten on the work for reparations in the US.
The National Education Association voted to cut ties with the ADL, due to its anti-Black, anti-Palestinian bias. Commend them for this action (and hold them to it) here.
with love, heather
We’ve named her Shekhinah. It’s not, I think, her deepest, truest name, but I don’t think she minds this one too much.
I hope you check out the work of Dougy Center. I worked there some time ago, and I’m grateful for the care, attention, and advocacy they bring to childhood bereavement and grief. I found some of my dearest people there.
My kiddo was lucky enough to experience Bird by Bird through their 5th grade year. I was lucky enough to tag along on a field trip.
Thank you for the reminder to pause and be quiet, to make time for awe. 🩷🩷
I am struck by your writing and how I could feel the pull to do, to groundedness to be, and the sheer awe at all that is.