A Natural Remembrance
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“I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.”
This makes for a wonderful setting for a quest. A rock, shaped like a meditation seat, greets me as I skirt the cliff tops. Two hundred feet below Birch, Rowan and Juniper, all native trees to this land of Scotland, are thriving after decades of overgrazing. They are clearly visible either side of the silver line of a river that carves a ‘U’ shaped valley into perfect symmetry. After the initiation of a regeneration project by local people, I hear this land singing the first few notes of a long forgotten song.
To the North East, from where the wind blows and the weather fronts arrive, beyond where the peregrines nest and where the ravens play, is my quest buddy, Jasmine. We fast in solitude, giving ourselves to this unforgiving wilderness for four days and nights. Our inspiration is the Native American Vision Quest, a ritual of initiation to mark and navigate the next developmental stage of a life’s journey.
The land up on the tops here appears barren to the untrained eye, but the small kingdoms reveal themselves to those who have the patience to stop and listen. Long grass nods melodically with the wind, until it stops and the midges, without fail, mount an attack! A chorus of ground nesting birds chase each other back and forth. A bumblebee flies in circles looking for a home in the moss.
I’m at the mercy of these mountains, which is a source of great relief. In the normal throngs of life I am, somehow, meant to have it all under ‘control’. Here, I’m not the protagonist, inflated with a false sense of importance, neither am I entranced by the instant gratification of ‘life’ at the push of a button. I want to wake up and feel the elements of this mountain that would choose to suck my blood, freeze my bones and yet soothe my soul, all at once.
Above me ravens circle up and up until I can no longer see them; a stunning example of what it is to be surrendered to the elements. Ancient and intimate relationships surround me - stone with wind, heather with feather, moss with rain. They dance to the same rhythm, just beyond my reach. How can I relate? I’m stuck in my head, which is leading to extreme boredom and frustration.
Today’s society consistently plugs the same implicit message, ‘be somewhere else, be someone else’. It fuels the pandemonium that characterises the human existence on this planet. Here on this mountainside, however, I receive no pity, no projection, no judgement, no lies, no misunderstanding. I came to this quest to ask this question: ‘how can I be MORE of who I am?’ And the resounding response I hear is ‘connect to what is more THAN you’.
With enough time on a mountainside with no distraction a unified field of Presence emerges, within and without. I can now hear the repetition in my head, notice my reactive behaviours and feel the emotions I would normally suppress. This is my path to integration.
I come to these wild places, where I am no one, to sit on a rock and go nowhere, to remember that my value, my worth, is not conditional on me being ‘anyone’ or doing ‘anything’. It is inherent.
Another front of dark clouds rolls by as I tune into the beat of my animal rhythm. Looking up I see the grass still nodding, thankfully. A buzzard screeches from somewhere inside of me I cannot place. Moss climbs up between my bare toes, as the sky finds space in my mind and the wind freedom in my breath. A ‘me’ that has been here all along reveals itself, primordial and pristine. I remember it and it remembers me.