“The bare trees wave their branches,  just to let the winter know 
that they haven’t got a thing to wear, and they need a dress of snow.”
                                                                                    —- Clara Senior Burke

These are the last couple of lines from CS Burke’s ‘November’ , which over the years I sang joyfully with countless children.

She knew kids and had an intimate relationship with nature as well. Those branches do look lovelier with a ‘dress of snow’.

The intelligence of trees is striking.  In autumn they purge, heaving off their lovely foliage, letting it sift to the earth where it piles into forage to sustain the tree through the long, icy winter.  This is the dream time, when the tree restores her energy, and revitalizes her parts.  

And the older I grow, the more I find in common with trees.  Their quiet, deep wisdom envelopes me as I walk among them.   I learn patience,  gratitude, reciprocity, and humility. It is this season that they show me how to be in the dreamtime.  When Being trumps doing.

The ‘human  being’ implies two entities: the ‘human’ part is the doer. whereas the ‘being’ part is spirit.   We bring both into this world and no matter how often it is explained to us, we eternally forget that we are in truth, spiritual beings robed with a human body.

It is this time of the year, as solstice grows near, when Nature offers us the gift of ‘being’.   She, the wisdom keeper, shows us how to move inward to dream, meditate, and revitalize.   

I hear the naysaying:  Impossible! Too much!  Too busy!

What if we took a holiday from the holidays?  It’s the perfect year for it.  We are being invited to downsize Christmas.  What an opportunity!  No muss, no fuss, no excuse.  

Walk in the woods.  Make a nourishing winter soup.  Hot apple cider.  Sing.  Read.   Read aloud.  Send messages of love and kindness.  Build a snowman.   Try a snow angel!  Get out the toboggan. 

Tune in to the frequency of Gaia. How are we the same?  Let’s count the ways:
We are made of the same stuff.  We share the same atmosphere.  What heals her heals us.  What poisons her poisons us.  When we need uplifting, we simply venture out and embrace her.  Physicians are now writing Rx for immersing our self in parkland forests.   We have named these ways — Earthing, (walking barefoot on the Earth)  Forest Bathing (moving among the trees and being in the same mind space). 

I believe we instinctively know how to be healthy and it is not with a prescription for pharmaceuticals.  We need to get close and personal with the Earth.  Slow down. Spend time among the trees, eat a plant rich diet, learn to truly love this Earth as a conscious being, showing her your gratitude for her beauty and abundance.  Wake up everyday saying thank you for the morning.  

Think about it.  If all of us followed this Rx I am certain Covid would be on the way out.  Gaia is patiently showing us that the way we have been living on her and treating her is no longer acceptable.  I think we instinctively know this.  

So say good morning to those chirping tree sparrows and chickadees.  Brush the snow lovingly off the limbs of pines.  Don’t be afraid to hug a beautiful tree trunk.  Be cool with the one-leggeds. Learn from them. Ancient forests were thought of as sacred places, and indeed they remain such. Our job is to wake up to this.  Awareness is where it starts.  

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”

― John Muir