I can recommend
a sunrise watch and dance with
“Morning Has Broken.”
I can recommend
a sunrise watch and dance with
“Morning Has Broken.”
What if the trees deep/
in the woods miss us as much/
as we’re missing them?
Back Story:
The other day I was walking through the woods at Spirit Tree Farms, and I felt like I should spend some time at the base of The Old Woman of the Woods, “our” pre-Civil War giant oak tree. As I was feeling her bark, connecting with her, I felt a deep melancholy, a sense of longing, a sense of missing her. I wondered why I’d stayed away from connecting with her, and Nature, and God’s creations, for so long.
Suddenly, I was away that the feeling was mutual. It was almost as if she whispered “Hello, Boy. Welcome back. I’ve missed you. I’ve been lonely for you.”
I’d never thought of that concept before, that maybe the trees miss us! That thought inspired this haiku.
Backstory: On #HomeGrownNationalPark‘s Facebook page, someone posted a photo of sprouting acorns, and wrote: “I know it’s not much, but … “.
Here’s my response:
I was catching up on posting past writing, and didn’t know I’d already posted this piece on Getting Outside in www.NaturesGuy.com.
We need to get outside, to breathe fresh air, to see the sun, to feel Nature.
There was a time, when I worked at Microsoft near Seattle, where I never saw the sun. Even now, memories of sitting in a closet-like room with no windows, where I had to walk out a door and look down a long, narrow hallway to the small window a hundred feet away, to even see a peek outside, causes my stomach to twist in knots, my heart to clamp down, my throat to tighten and my head to hurt. To be kept away from the outdoors, to not FEEL Nature on a regular basis, can’t be good!
I knew it back then, in my gut, and it turns out that my desire to feel nature was right! Recent studies are showing that activities such as taking walks outside, sitting in the sun, forest bathing, can all significantly reduce stress, anxiety, hypertension, and many other modern ailments.