Wide Awake

Today is a strange day, filled with a sense of anticipation that is as bewildering as it is refreshing. The redwood forest through which I walk each day is a magical place at all times, yet it’s too true that familiarity dulls the senses. I always enjoy greeting the trees and the land and the water, yet I have been preoccupied of late; distracted.

A day like today is a remedy for all distraction – it refuses to allow preoccupation. The whole land seems to hum with a sense of expectation, the trees seem to be holding their breath, the water seems restless and watchful. Around every turn I met my familiar friends, yet they were different today. I saw them with the eye of a stranger again, and was filled with wonder. The structure of the leaves, the kinetic positions of the branches; all seemed drawn in stark relief, sharp and clear, more transcendent than ever.

Movement just out of sight was constant, it seemed; sudden small motions in the corners of my eyes – I would look and see leaves shivering, as if something had just disturbed them and departed in a blink. A Steller’s Jay, unusually quiet, landed in my path, then flew onto a branch beside my head, and kept pace for a while (no doubt wanting food). A flock of quail burst out from beneath and above an old fence, then raced ahead of us on the path for a time. A huge eucalyptus gave a sudden crack while I was walking beneath its branches that made me jump, thinking a branch was coming down on me; but I looked up to see merely a sheet of its old bark falling from it, revealing the smooth new skin of the tree beneath.

Specific places I sense to be sacred – mostly redwood circles or the pairings I tend to call portals – stood out almost aggressively today; impossible to pass them without awe.

Berries are vivid on their branches, leaves brilliant lemon, gold, scarlet or purple. The older leaves litter the paths in drifts, then rise up in little swirls and spirals when the wind plays with them. The ivy that carpets the ground and adorns the trees seems to glow and quiver in the slanting sunlight, or sleep in deep green velvet shadows.

The trees are awake today; far more wide awake than I am, I think.