the storm on the other side.

listening to a forest, dreaming across the continent, and what to do with grief in a moment of peace?

Feb. 5th, 2024. 8am, Eastern Standard Time. Waning crescent moon.

I’ve come to listen. It takes quite a while of wandering quietly through these privately owned woods to hear what’s underneath the crunch of icy leaves, the gentle song of the chickadees, and the din of dogs being walked along the road far below. No one can see me here. No one except these trees, this breeze, and the brilliance of this light illuminating my body, just as it does the gossamer threads between sticks. I find a perch where a squirrel had breakfast - and a morning poo - and position myself to take in their soundscape.

Last night all my dreams were full of storm.   Wave upon wave crashing into the Earth, mixing with torrential rains and wind.   I woke up disheveled, as if I had been in a blender.  I looked out the window to find the calm still dawn, sun rising in a simple blue sky, remnants of snow beginning to melt and leaving an omen of warmth for the day.  

But elsewhere, at a slightly different time, a storm has been raging.  Whatever the media calls it to make it seem as fearsome as possible, it is a curtain of water hovering over my homeland all the same.  I know this because my friends, my dearest ones, are sending me pictures and stories that tell of their harrowing experiences climbing over trees to get to their children, watching water pour into their barns and basements, and waiting by candlelight as the live power lines lay strewn about the landscape.  In another season, in what feels like an age ago, the same power lines got pulled down by the trees shaken from their roots by the wind, only this time their sparks ignite the land in concentric circles. This land is fast becoming one of extreme fire, extreme water.

If we were to wonder about who to blame these extremes on, we might begin with the power lines that stand neglected, though essential. Power does not just create these people’s light, it’s also their heat, their stoves and fridges, and their water source. Or perhaps we might blame the wind, often thought of as a pernicious influence, the harbinger of turmoil and illness.  Wind is not one of the five elements, is not synonymous with air.  Or maybe we blame ourselves for the generations of living and disallowing pain, suffering, and fear.  Deep in the woods I sit, thinking these thoughts, and hear a tiny sound from behind as I finish writing the word fear.  I spin quicker than I could imagine, feeling the electrical charge of fear zoom through my spine, then pulse white hot behind my eyes.  It’s just the wind, tickling a branch.

The wind, the power lines, the hundreds of years of moving towards comfort, they all point to the same thing: the fragility of this place in the face of imbalance.  California seems to be one of the canaries, along with a place 7000 miles to the south, as Chile burns.  And in Antarctica, where ice turns to soup, leaving the glacier dwellers to tread water.  These places are tender, and prone to extremes from beauty to disaster.  We will all watch them drastically change in our lifetime, and if we love a place, it doesn’t matter where we are, it’s struggles live inside of us.

 I’ve sat deep in these woods long enough now to notice the porcupine perched high up in the pine tree, swaying gently in the tiny breeze. It seems to be facing the sun. These landscapes are both living inside of me, creating me in fact, in this very moment. They are woven together through my own watershed, does the porcupine know? I wonder what stories are wafting off my skin as these tall, lanky, quiet trees listen in?   We are all listening, gossamer thread and porcupine and human and tree, as the season shifts and the sun brings each of our stories to each other.  

I know the western winds dance across this continent (or turtle’s back, as I prefer to think of it), bringing stories to these trees I sit among.  I exhale a hope that this sunlight carries some of the peace and comfort and quiet of this forest to my friends towards the west, reaching them in a few hours time.  And I hope this land can do something with the tears that come with the catch in my throat as I grieve for my coastal live Oak friends, my California Bay tree friends, and my precious ravine medicine that is being pummeled by a force largely unknown to these plants. The power will be recovered. The people will recover. But when old trees lie down, they do not stand up again. 

I look up and imagine the grief wafting off that land, presently in the midst of destruction.  I let it mingle with this land that is presently steeping me in a moment of peace.  I imagine them mixing with my breath, let them know each other, these places that I breathe.  They already do.

“We reside in a living world shaped by reciprocity. 
Every single thing we do composes Nature’s response to us.”
–Seanan Zook