#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Forest Bathing

There is something in nature that can make us happy that is separate from the happiness we get from other things, like friends, or family, or music. Our relationship with nature is unique, and it can make us uniquely happy. -

~ Qinq Li, Forest Bathing,

Lady Slipper

I know it’s a holiday weekend and the rain is a downer for so many who have this time off and special events. But I am ecstatic to wake into this wetness, breaking the drought, bathing all the growing things, including me. My oldest, my son, and my youngest, my daughter, both join me for a walk in the woods in the rain. Such a welcome homecoming. The first thing: I must go all around the property looking at all my plants, flowers, trees, to see the changes, to check on everyone’s bloom or bud or survival. Hooray for the blue hydrangeas! Thank you to K– who kept them alive and crossing over into thriving! How happy they are in the downpour! All the rose bushes have tight red buds and the new young lilacs are in bloom. Milkweed! There are six, and they are tall and healthy in the rain garden. My new saplings and blue spruce are quite healthy; the spruce shows fresh growth. I am so happy at the river, and slopping through the woods, chatting with my children. We get as far as the dripping slippers on Lady Slipper way, and they, and Suzi, are ready to return for breakfast and warming. But I keep going happily and I’m greeted by the soggy droopy wild geraniums and the tall and straight and gorgeous wild blue flags in the marsh. I meet one biker and one man walking his dogs. Otherwise, it’s Charlie and me in the delicious splatter, humming along, so happy to be home. It’s good to get away; I needed this break and change of routine. I have come home with much changed in my heart, a kind of spiritual awakening and shift that I needed. Humbling and also reviving. A new perspective. A scratched raw feeling, now a healing. A clarity of vision. I’m going to do some psychodrama again. For myself. With an exceptional woman I have not worked with in years, my primary trainer for decades. The impulse to connect with Nina came to me suddenly, decisively, in a flash of insight. I had the thought, made the call. She answered immediately. I heard her voice, the welcome in it, and felt a flood of emotion, the surprise of it. A tree branch bending to touch its roots.