To be here in this fleeting moment, awake and alive, is a feeling many of us are not always familiar with. This notion of presence becomes magnified when I am in the forest.
Most days, my mind is scattered in a dozen directions. Creative ideas, potential projects, hazy intentions, anxieties about the future. A maze of thought and ideation that sometimes takes me away from my own presence.
But the moment I step back into the woods, something shifts. My mind may still wander, but I am no longer lost within it. I am present— a piece of a vast, living tapestry, a part of the wilderness surrounding me. My chest expands, my breathing deepens, and I find myself settling into the moment.
The forest teaches me to open myself to the moment -- to flow like a winding stream or the wind in the trees. To embody patience like the trunks that grow slowly toward the light. To follow the topography of my intuition, guiding me toward quiet pools of knowing that everything is okay.
In this quiet time of winter, when the forest rests, the clarity of presence feels even sharper. Every sound seems amplified— a bird in the brush, a mouse in the moss. Your cold skin grows sensitive to changing textures, to every shift in the wind, to the subtle touch of tree bark on your fingertips. Winter asks so little of us, and in its stillness, it becomes easier to simply be here.