As Within, So Without.

My eyes barely blinking open, I register that the sun is about to come up. I am so comfortable and warm on my futon mattress, a body pillow wedged just so, the window slightly ajar letting in the sounds of chickadees and finches. Che is on my legs and I know that if he senses that I am awake he will begin his ritual food dance that will reach a crescendo culminating in slobbery licks to my face. I decide to surrender to the other realm and softly allow my eyes to close once more.

An hour or so later I awaken again and this time Che is on to my game and Darth is already running around the living room meowing and wailing. Then I’m up and the ritual commences; food for the animals, shoes for me and we are out the door.

The air is cool and the sky is not as overcast as yesterday. We hit the Superior Hiking Trail running, veering off onto a ski trail that meanders through a young pine grove. I stop and inhale, then smile.

We reach the hwy and I decide that today is the day we cross it to reach the next section of the trail. We make the transition smoothly and are soon headed towards an overlook on the spur trail. The air is damp and deer scat litters the flattened ground. As I walk, I notice the volume of broken twigs, decomposing leaves and tree branches. It dawns on me that this process is necessary for the survival of the forest, that this refuse is actually forming the top of layer of nutrients and soil for the surrounding undergrowth and trees. This cycle is slow and it takes its own time, affected by many different variables; moisture, animals, foot traffic, weather.

I began to think about this in relationship to my own processes and life. The cycles are inevitable and natural events that meld into one another with no real end or beginning; each one facilitating the next, shaping and growing who I am. Even grief and trauma in their own state of decomposition are renewing other pieces of my expanding self, creating fertile soil for the next process.

I lay back on a moss covered log over a small ravine pondering surrender. I look up through the tree branches that were reaching for the sunlight to the blue sky beyond and remember just how small I am. And not only small, but linked; the macrocosm within the microcosm, as within, so without.

Life is not static or linear, it is a circular chain of present moments, each one folding over onto the next.