A day of gentle rain, mist hanging all day over the lake. I went there to meet a friend, to walk the trails and visit, after my three months away and before her departure to Bali. I did not anticipate anything dramatic happening on this day. We talked of the Bhagavad Gita, the importance of right action. My thoughts spun to other recent conversations, with other friends, about the same book. Riddles and enigmas, of commiting to the world but without attachment. Or maybe it’s just as simple as a walk in the park.
We faced no attacks from the motley dogs who passed along the way—unlike last year in Thailand. I was walking on a beach, and a small white dog bolted suddenly from its owner’s side and leaped at my crotch. Teeth missed that mark but broke skin on my thigh, so I opted for rabies shots.
What is a dog’s nature? What is danger, or health, in natural terms?
The trees in the windless forest stood gaunt and tall, mossy green and lichen gray, unspeaking. Content, while our words roamed over the ages, over the planet, into realms of philosophy and local events, friends and teachers, weather and rents. Feet following trails of dogs, deer, bicycles, boots.
No birds present, but traffic, over the hill, from the TransCanada. Later, after my friend drove away from the parking lot, I laced on running shoes, retraced steps and then veered to that lookout, through a ragged fence. The roar from the whizzing machines, like maniacal robot dogs bent on paths of destruction, was enough to send me reeling back to the trees.
Nature stood by watching, holding space.
And Nature asked me to come here today to speak to you, to render her thoughts as mine, since no other scribe volunteered. So here we are.
She said that no matter what happens, we are to know that she will continue to hold space. She forgives us every transgression, every extinction, every poison injected into her blood, every defiling of her air and waters, every perversion of her genetic code. She forgives the slaughter of our own kind, and that of the innumerable species we have exploited and expunged. She casts a sidelong glance at our fascination with toys of the mind, shut away from her kindnesses and necessaries at all times possible. She dreams of the day we awake to our nature.
She proceeds by no organization but her own, in the making. Calm water, glassy but for a duck here, a spattering of raindrops there. Mist hanging soft, colorless, unapologetic.
She stands by, holding space.
–Nowick Gray, January 2016
