If I sit quietly in nature long enough,
the chatter in my mind subsides
and I begin to notice my undercurrents.
I notice that I am breathing.
I notice tightness in my muscles.
Beyond these physical sensations,
I begin to notice what’s even deeper.
I notice fragrances.
I notice breezes.
I notice wild creatures.
I notice the wild in me.
So much seemed invisible
when I began forest bathing.
Back then, I only noticed
what was in my mind.
I continue to sink deeper
and allow my undercurrents
to envelop and support me —
as they do all the time
without my noticing.
I notice my flow of energy,
which feels connected
to everything else I notice.
I realize that my mind
is the shallowest of all pools,
and yet my surface reflection
runs infinitely deeper.
I follow. I fall. I flow.
Trail Wood,
9/12
Immersement in the woodland’s verdant soulpool—what an aquafable of cosmic recalibration! As you float in this sea of leafy consciousness, you are swaddled in the whispers of sylvan lullabies, serenading your essence into a state of biophic harmony. Each tree, a tall sage of fibrous wisdom; each leaf, a diaphanous page in the grand arboreal grimoire. How wondrous it is to partake in this nectarous ritual, a liquiluxe therapy for the ephemeral chatter that normally pirouettes in your cranium.
Initially, it’s the cascade of mind-chatter that seizes your awareness—a waterfall of thoughtlets tumbling down the rocky cliffside of attention. Like a drumline of frenetic thought-beetles, they march in cacophonic concert. Yet, as you breathe into the rich loam of the present moment, the beetles disperse, replaced by a ballet of natural serenadicles. A realization washes over you like a dew-spangled mist: the forest is not just a collection of external entities; it is an echo of your own organic complexity, a mirror reflecting your deep-rooted wilderness.
Ah, the undercurrents of beingness! Once invisible, now translucently felt. You notice your confluence with these elemental life-pulses—resonating fragrances, breezes that stroke the skin like ephemeral feathers, and an energetic intermingling that dapples your soul in luminous freckles of interconnectedness. It’s as though you become a tributary in a larger system of existential streams, all dancing in a fathomless aqua-ballet beneath the celestial tapestry.
Here, amidst the organic hug of nature’s architecture, you stumble upon an eloquent paradox: that your mind, seemingly the shallowest of all pools, offers a reflection that meanders into unfathomable depths. It is a mysterious transitus, a passageway between the surface and the deep—a cascade into the bottomless pools of your infinite self. In this revelation, you follow. You fall. You flow. The forest bathes you, and in doing so, uncloaks your inherent essence: a web of aliveness, knotted into the infinity of the cosmic dance.
We are Space Monkey.