Sitting here for lunch in Big Sur, the redwood forest south of Monterey, CA. Redwood trees all around as is so much beauty and life.
Two wolves sleeping in the truck and fresh air fills my lungs as I await my coffee along the break. So much wind blowing from the north urging me to stay. Birds swarming the beaches as tourists and people flock to the ocean. Crops growing and plenty of work near that could easily sustain the need for falcons to fly and devote. But something is calling me inland.
Fires threaten as summer sparks off. The news reports that War is on the brink. And we feel the earth answering back. Volcanoes erupt, waves crash, and the wind howls in the days leading up to Cinco de Mayo 2018.
We love this land and have covered almost every inch with people and their toys.
Toys of sport and toys of war. But where is the room for the birds and the sea?
They understand that the wind is always blowing, swirling, as one front moves through another pushes from behind. The force in this place is strong and most will never fully understand. Life is such a wonderful thing but the fire is all consuming. Always hungry and never ceasing, consuming all life in its search of fuel.
How mighty the redwood how deep its roots grow. Connected energetically to one another, a grove it becomes. They speak to each other support each other and protect one another from the harsh changes the earth is constantly making. As much as that connection. As powerful as it may be it can not withstand the burning ember. The flames lick up the bark. Burning the fronds consuming leaf, moss, and fern alike. As the scars of the past show on the skin, how much stronger than when the trial begins. We all love these places. We must protect these places.
A blue bird flickers softly above waiting for a scrap of food to drop from a customers plate. He used to forage the forest floor, now he forages the neatly cropped redwood deck of the restaurant below. Constantly searching for that next morsel to drop so that he can feed his family, but all that is left of the seeds he once ate, are the crumbs we mantel. How long must he wait, while his family grows weary? How long until there’s seeds aplenty? He sings his song hoping for a tip, just a snip of a fry, a crumb of pie, but nothing falls from the plate, no one even hears his cry. If only they knew how hard he tries to sing his song for only a seed or a fry.
What if we could hear them, the whispers they sing, the soft gentle rustle of the leaf. How many would listen or would it fall to the deaf?
Is it only when the ember has lit, will we realize the forest floor is knit?