The morning light shifts notably these mornings….And I feel it in me when I rise
I too am shifting, down, into a lower gear, softly falling to the earth as the golden leaves to the ground
I exhale and release gratefully into this time of letting go.
The one last gift I longed for from summer was a family camping night and some forest herb gathering
and so it was, cozy under bright stars, waking to frost on the logs we leaned into by fire light the night before.
I now feel a season complete, having been so generous with us, I feel so happy for the return of the season of internal times and retreat
As I slept in the forest this weekend, This poem kept coming to me, one of my very favorites, reminding me that what truly sets me straight is being outside, being in nature and being nurtured by her.
Sleeping in the Forest
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 riverbed, 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 somethings better.- Mary Oliver
