I took the day off and drove near Palatka and hiked, wandered, stretched, contemplated and lay down in Rice Creek Swamp conservation area for 4 slow, allowing hours, celebrating solstice and the cycles of everything.
I felt blissful and grateful to be out walking among tupelo, cabbbage palms and palmetto all mossy in the morning light. I kept smiling in the sun, feeling grateful on the dewey trail. I spoke my gratitude for so many things in my life I am so fortunate to have. People in my life, my own realizations, my own capacities.
I took photos. I saw amazing beauty and smelled, felt and contemplated so many points of life. It feels important to get close to the ground.
I was noticing how natural it was to be there, and how fortunate I was to be in this place right now. I had not walked or hiked in months becausee of fatigue and illness. Being in the swamp was a most commfortable feeling, like I was in the place I belonged, a home.
An essay by Lane and Sarah Conn inspires me. They talk about ecological identity. I can go into a natural space on my own terms, like going out to find songbirds with binoculars, or I can just open all my senses to whatever experience might happen. The experience or recognition may be unpredictable. It is a challenge for most people to slow down from their manic overstimlated state where they have become conditioned to be talked at through sounds or pictures. A person may feel restless or worried about time they are wasting. The Conns state "In order to open yourself to the direct experience of another being, you must shift from a precipitating to a participating mode of interaction, from making it happen to sharing in the happening. ... You can turn your gaze toward a leaf or blade of grass and allow it to present itself to you, to imagine it coming into your consciousness instead of your going out and getting it. You can allow other beings to knock on the doors of your awareness, to visit on their own terms and in their own language."
What a wonder it is to stop, look and listen to what is in that moment in that place. The most unpredictable discoveries do occur. I found an incredible fungus inside a tree trunk that was dusting spores all down the wood onto the earth. It's sister fungus was doing the same at the entrance to the hole. It was like a Missouri cavern of regal majesty, in miniature, down there at the ground.
Today was solstice a special day for many. New phases, new cycles are always coming. I prayed... and meditated a bit. I prayed that humans slowly do start shifting from productivity, work, intellectualism, competition, power and numbing themselves with entertainment/technology to becoming more awake, aware and connected to each other, to earth and to their own hearts.
Other discoveries: emerging mosses, a burned out tree, red water flowing, and uncountable sensations of awe and inclinations to say Hello! as a greeting to all the beings and interim cycles of their lives I encountered, or recognized by luck or by patience, there, near the ground, or there in the air.
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