Category: Nature + Moon + Tea

The Traces We Leave Behind

On our morning walk through the fading cosmos fields, I heard the pied crows crying out from the trees in the distance. I couldn’t see them, but their call was clear as it rang out across the blue sky. These crows have shown up quite often lately, as if to call the winter in.

The dryness of the cooler months is announcing itself – the grass is turning brown, the deciduous trees have lost their leaves and the autumn flowers are dying back. Summer’s rain is a distant memory and in its absence I try to find new things to love in the present season.

wild tales cosmos

We passed some crab apple trees while walking near the dam. Crab apples in their prime where blushing in beautiful deep shades of orange.

crab apples

I discovered a trace of something interesting underneath the tree. There appeared to be wild hare droppings alongside the fallen fruit in the grass. Tiny bite marks on the crab apples on the ground confirmed their presence. It was a lovely surprise to come across traces of their elusive little souls because I love knowing that there are little touches of wildness even in the city.

hare droppings

crab apple bites

The discovery sparked thoughts about the traces that we leave behind. The little pieces of ourselves left forever in the spaces we have moved through. The traces we leave in each other’s lives and hearts. The stories that mothers and grandmothers leave their daughters with are all traces of themselves.

What traces do you leave behind in your own life stories?

And one question that always comes to mind is – What traces are we leaving on the Earth?

I wish I could be as gentle as elusive wild hare, leaving behind only subtle traces of myself and gifts for the Great Mother who feeds me, staying within the balance of things and helping to keep it in check. It’s a sad reality that humanity has built its legacy off upsetting the balance, disrespecting the cycles Nature and raping the Earth.

I try in my little ways, as many of us do, to be thoughtful, responsible and to keep my footprint as small as I can. At times I wonder if this will ever be enough. Perhaps it won’t. But I choose to remain hopeful, rooted in inspired action and involved in creating solutions. All efforts, however big or small, count for something. They feed into a collective movement geared towards restoring our relationship with the Earth, a movement that demands different ways of doing things. This is how progress is made. One little step at a time. The more we add our little voices to the mix, the louder that collective voice becomes. With persistence, that voice inspires change and the right kind of action.

So I hope that the traces I leave behind will reflect all these things that I carry in my heart. I pray that I find ways to leave behind a trail of petals that touch, inspire and heal those who I meet along my path – delicate heart-shaped petals that are imbued with love and good intentions. And should they fall on futile ground, may they turn to dust and return to the Earth as a nourishing gift for all that she gives me.

Peace and Angel Wings

“Peace is where I am.”

This is my mantra today. It isn’t always easy to remember that I can embody the peace that I seek. However, when those moments show up, the ones where harmony and stillness tip everything into sync, I’m reminded that the tapestry of our inner essence is woven from fine threads of precious peace.

I sensed the presence of angels in the garden quite strongly this morning. When I sat down to meditate, I felt wrapped in angel wings, Archangel Michael’s. Silent joy burst open in my heart. Peace permeated everything.

I found myself thinking about finding angels in wild places. The wild Earth, the trees, plant allies and animals all have their own energy, spiritual essence and elemental guardians. Yet on many occasions, I feel the angels in these natural spaces too. These loving celestial forces of light who are guiding and protecting us on our paths. In my mind’s eye I catch a glimpse of Archangel Ariel standing between the trees, Jophiel amongst the flowers, Uriel rising with the sun, Haniel sitting on the moon, Raphael mending broken wings and Gabrielle helping my attune to Nature’s wild whispers and interpret them with my pen.

angels in nature

Today, I received and email from a beautiful woman who I once did a healing session for. She mentioned feeling so connected to the angels and said that white feathers kept finding their way to her. It’s lovely to hear stories like this, especially the bit about feathers because they have a special place in my heart. As I wrote in a previous blog post, I feel that sacred feathers drift into our lives as signs from heaven and symbols of hope. They’ve shown up during the most difficult periods in my life with special messages that helped me carry on. They remind me that all things are mediums of spirit and that even when we don’t always see it, there is a divine interconnection and sacred communication carried out between all things. This is how the truth of our unity and oneness with Life, love and sacredness makes itself known.

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The Words Remembered

It is a strange thing that happens to me at times. I wake up with passages in my head, words from books that I read long ago. Lines from poems I haven’t thought of in years. And sometimes, in the middle of the night I go searching for these books, to see if my memory of what was written is true.

It’s funny that I don’t always remember full stories, or the characters and the journeys they went on, just little snippets of things that tugged at my heart strings and sentences that captured an essence so real to me.

Last night, I remembered this beautiful passage from Zora Neal Hurson’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God:

“So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time … and an orange time. But when the pollen again gilded the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn’t know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody had ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. She often spoke to falling seeds and said, ‘Ah hope you fall on soft ground,’ because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off.”

I honestly wonder where I was and who I was with in the dream world for me to wake up thinking of this.

I tried to remember what it was about this piece that touched me several years ago when I first read it. The answers came flooding back. The poetic genius with which Zora crafted her words took my breath away – the brilliant description of the passage of the seasons and time, the air of ethereal mystery and the reference to Nature’s wild whispers.

There is something in this scene that reminds me of my younger self who also knew things that nobody had ever told her. Like how to light a candle under the full moon or how to place an amethyst crystal on my brow chakra to calm my thoughts back when I didn’t even know what a chakra was or that crystals carried healing energy.

It connected with the part of me who heard whispers in the wind and music among the gently swaying grasses. That was something that my younger self could never explain to anyone, so when I read this I felt understood.

This passage also reminds me of the younger self who stood at the gate listening to the sky, not knowing what the rest of her life would bring, but expecting ‘things’ too.

Wild things. Mysterious things. Exciting things.

Things that would take me away from my small broken existence and away from the ‘people and things’ who’d failed me.

I didn’t know what form they’d take back then, but I searched, expected and waited for these ‘things’ that I sensed would steer me to my dreams. It felt like an eternity before those things should up and I was finally old enough to step outside of the gates and walk the road towards those them. But fortunately, the time always comes when change sets in.

Since then, I’ve continued to look forward and walk deeper into peace and personal freedom, building my life and re-wilding my soul. Which makes me wonder if I’ve remember this now to help me recognise how far I’ve come and the headway I’ve made in my attempts to remain true to the girl that I once was? That is something to feel good about.

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