Nature's Love

photo by arantxa villa

Nature’s Love 

second year erin o’keefe 

I left it all behind me in a blur. The stress and woes of my life were easily set aside the moment I started out on my way into the lush woods ahead. I inhaled sharply the cool rush of air and exhaled in the same way. I smiled at the thought of having no thoughts at all. I simply walked. The walk turned into a climb as the incline increased and I welcomed the challenge as a new distraction. At this point, I couldn't even remember what I was distracted from, I just knew that I was. There was no one around me, but I was far from alone. Rather, I had a thousand different friends whispering to me at things I could hear but could not understand. Their leaves swayed, causing me to pause and sway with them before moving past my spot where I had stood. In sharing a dance with the forest dwellers I felt I was one of them and soon I could feel my heart beat in time with theirs. It was a feeling I loved in a way different from the love I feel for people. This made the feeling somehow more special to me.The wind whipped around my hair, pushing it back from my face, fully exposing my smile to the audience of trees all around me. 

The path is more grown in more than my memory serves me, but my feet still know all the right steps to take. The smell of the pines fills my senses and reminds me to breathe a little deeper. The feeling of my breath triggers my body to run, against my mind’s wishes, and I find myself striving faster and faster to the top. I am desperate to get there, so desperate the current sights around me fade into one similar blur of familiarity. I see the large boulder and curve the corner as the ground beneath me begins to flatten. The chill of the wind is faster still and I welcome it as a warm embrace. I slow as I see them, the two trees that reach from the ground up to the clear blue sky, parallel next to each other. I feel as though I could cry the most crystalline tears of joy, yet I do not. Instead I continue onward, brushing my hands against the bark of the trees as I pass through the doorway they have created for me. I climb up the last rocky slope and I’m there.  

On top of the mountain that is my whole world.  

But what is next? I wonder to myself. 

I must venture down. I know it is true and so I do so willingly, because I know that there will always be a day I can climb it again. I know that there will always be a day I can leave behind the weight of society in favor of something clearer. Mother Nature’s embrace will always be there, waiting to envelope me in comfort of something I could never manufacture on my own. It is a gift that I willingly accept with nothing to give in return, for she asks of nothing from all the same. In this way, I am free to enjoy the beauty of my surroundings without fear of a day when I am alone in this life.