What I heard when I talked to the trees

 

Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.
~ Roy T. Bennett

Hey, Lovelies.

Maybe I’ll speak to the trees someday.

I mean, I introduced myself that first day. That first day I came here to this secret grove.

I have announced myself each day since.

But that’s it for conversation. Mostly right now, I just listen

It’s a chatty place, this forest.

The wind talks.

The birds talk.

The crickets and cicadas talk.

And everything breathes. Breaths you can hear, once you start to slow down and tune in.

Each plant and animal being has a song. The rocks sing. The stream sings. The land itself sings.

So, my inexperienced ears are still getting used to all of that music.

Still, I’m feeling less of an intruder, and more someone who has a place here amid the slanted sunlight, the drizzling rain, or under the starry sky or the drifting clouds.

There is kindness here.

That’s how the trees directed me yesterday.

I slowed down enough that I could hear my own heart.

My own breaths.

My own blood throbbing in my ears and fluttering in my eyelids and beating my heart.

Oh, I thought to myself.

Here I am.

I don’t know what that means yet. But it’s a start.

When I sat there long enough, I had two visitors, one by one.

My friend Kate.

My beautiful Leanna, mum to our dear friend Vynette.

Both of them have passed from this world.

Neither of them spoke to me. They just kept me company a while.

That was enough, and more than I could have ever asked for.

The door between this world and the next seems to open more easily in this wild old place.

Love, hugs, and a gentle rain of falling leaves, Nicole xx

PS – This, for Kate, whom I love and miss as much as I ever did. She and I both adore this song. I hope you love it too.