On the forest floor

My 3-day pilgrimage jump started my 2024 Lenten observance which is commencing tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, February 14. The daily long walks through Sonoma County’s villages, hills and valleys, forests, coastal prairies, country roads and Highway 1 heightened my senses and deepened my mindfulness which will be helpful for a contemplative Lenten journey. Every year, I attempt a meaningful Lent but always get distracted, failing to fully participate and therefore missing out on the opportunity to transform the every day to a more sacred experience.

I got a meditation book with 6-minute daily exercises that will hopefully guide me this year. On the first few pages of this small black book, I find this sentence “Lent is a time to experience joy” very meaningful. By becoming even more attentive on how I will use my time and resources in the next 40 days, I’m going to experience gratitude. By becoming mindful, I will elevate the mundane routines to extraordinary ones.

This takes me to my meditation on forest floor. In one of the walking stages, we hiked on switchbacks, descended from a hill to a forest. On the surface, the forest floor appears to be a mess, especially after the recent storms. Yet, fallen trees, branches, twigs, dead leaves, and tree needles are natural elements of the forest floor. They will decompose and enrich the soil that is vital to the sustainability of the forest, the individual trees and other living things in that ecosystem. In our lives, we experience struggles, disappointments, anxiety, boredom, stress, but also hope, joy and excitement. These are all part of being human and when we allow ourselves to experience these emotions is when we feel so alive.

On the Forest Floor

By David Wagoner

In this green shade, over the leaves and rubble
Of the fallen and still falling, over branches
And tangles of tree roots, over whole stones
And whole nurse logs, beneath the arches
Of ferns and the grottoes of deadfalls,
The moss has spread and deepened an underworld.

You kneel here naturally, and the air around you
Yields to your touch like moss, as the moss itself
Will yield to snow and ice through winter
To return as what it was,
And the green air you breathe is yielding to rain
Softer than moss, suspended like a cloud.

And moss – the only living substance here
For which a speck of sky after the death
Of a leaf is not an oracular emptiness –
The cold before the cold –
Has no need to fall. It was born fallen
And live in its own light, by its own light.

The closer you look at it, the more it changes
To the landscapes of the earth,
The yet-to-be and the dead and the newly risen
Merged into rootless lives whose entrances,
Like your lost eyes, become what enters them,
Where all that endures is your bewilderment.