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Great insights, Daniel. I often think about the communication between tress while I am in the forest especially in aspen groves as there are such a tight community off clones. I have an idea for a children’s book on this topic I can share at some point. I hope to write it soon!

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Yes the skill of deep listening is critical right now to move positively past this complex juncture of racial oppression and COVID, an unprecedented but also promising time in US/global history if we listen deeply to the voices that are little heard in the human and more than human world.

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To Wade, I read your post with a big smile on my face. I loved how you depicted a detective story and the lies led you to what you most what to see happen, the changes you are eager for. I wish that for you!

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I went to a new part of Denver for me to scout a new forest bathing walk I wanted to share with a regular private client. The place I visited is called Bluff Lake and it is an oasis in this city–a green space filled with water fowl. I love how the walk starts above the lake and visitors drop slowly to its level as the city and the far away mountains disappear from view. So begins and began for me an immersive experience in grasses and water and the friends who live in this ecosystem. I came upon a sunny turtle and several heron and red-winged blackbird, some geese, and bunnies and many families out thriving the outdoors. As is the case without fail, other nature, had my back. I actively left my brain in my car and asked my body to take to the route I would offer my client. Over an hour of wandering, watching, listening, and receiving, the way was clear and my belief in my attachment to being a guide all the stronger.

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My post: I have found through a practice in the forest of noticing my experience—forest bathing/therapy—that I am able to hear my body’s voice more clearly and pay attention and tend to it. But when I am in the flow of my day inside without dedicated time to dig deep and listen to my body, much is lost that I could benefit from hearing.

So last night, I was doing one of my favorite ritual-albeit under new circumstances given the pandemic. I was watching a slow lovely thoughtful film from the Mountainfilm festival—not shown in beautiful Telluride, but from my own home this time, remotely. I was not in a chair as one would be in a film festival or possibly on the floor as their films sell out. I was folding laundry as I watched a film about Nepal and the coming of new roads that will replace the walking to market way of life. I loved the slow pace of the story and the glorious images and felt serene until a small incident, a calf stuck on a narrow dangerous bridge over a chasm there are many of these in the Himalayas for crossing and they are terrifying and memorable). The calf was blocking traffic and scaring the family the film was following. I felt blocked on the bridge like they did and even teary-eyed, feeling for the little animal as it was being forced to move, so the flow of life could be continue, traffic could cross anew.

Surprised that my state had changed and for this small a reason it seemed, I stopped and did the breathing activity in the middle of the film and in the middle of a pile of laundry. Quickly I felt warmth moving through me as I breathed and meaning arriving, connecting me to the calf to my sad cat who was missing my son who is sheltering with us but is gone for the weekend and finally to me and my big submerged feelings of missing his presence…I was glad I had the assignment of this week to get me taking stock while inside my life and not just outside of it.

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I have enjoyed hearing about the discoveries that have come to people. Just because I also live in the Shinrin Yoku world, Lynn, I am wondering if you have felt any challenge from this assignment when moving away from the one phrase we use most in forest bathing, what are you noticing? I have loved that grounding question as it keeps me out of my head which I overuse. I have been leery of asking myself about the teaching in a feeling/experience for that reason. Any tensions for you around that, if you feel like sharing…

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Doc, I love the description you shared about being with your dad quiet and super connected. I have learned after too much delay in my life that talk does not take the highest spot in the pyramid of connection and that our other ways of being with others with our underutilized other senses are even more powerful communicators. Thank you for saying that in your way here.

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The first biographical detail I need to share is that I grew up on the 20th floor of an apartment building in New York City, far above the few trees that grew on my street and the river that flowed on the east side of the island of Manhattan. Mirroring our species’ recent history with the natural world, my family—and all the others in my concrete and brick base, towered over the natural world and pushed evidence of its existence to the fringe. Ever needing my space as a moody teenager and old enough to hop on my banana bike and take off on my own, I thankfully discovered the refuge that was and is Central Park. I would get lost in the limbs of its elms and oaks and the long grass of its meadows and feel safe and at home, like I could breathe.

But like the plot twist in Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree—when the young boy forgets to visit his beloved apple tree as his life is too busy for such overtures, I forsook nature and its power to replenish and heal me for at least 15 years as I roamed the globe in a workaholic haze making documentaries for public television, ironically, about the need to protect Mother Nature. (I’m not kidding! My first big series was even called RACE TO SAVE THE PLANET!) Talk about a disconnect. Even when I was lucky enough to “settle” down and raise a family and start a career as a counseling psychologist in the mountains near Vail, CO, I still did not SETTLE down and seek the quiet company of nature now no longer at a distance, but all around me, and yes now TOWERING over me. I made many forays into the wild–on backpack trips with our kids, and during fast runs through the trees ski hills while teaching young visitors to ski. But I was not allowing the space and time for a timeless connection. I am not sure I even knew to seek this, to expect it.

Five years ago, I received a magnificent re-introduction to nature during a leap of faith trip to North Carolina. I had signed up without any research (very unlike me) nor any hesitation to get trained for 9 days in the Great Smoky Mountains to be a forest bathing guide. Much like the description Steven Harper gives in The Way of Wilderness, out on deep sensory walks in the woods just minutes from the Appalachian Trail, I felt webs connecting me to everything in the area. It was a turning point for me as well. From that day on, my mind and body and spirit helped me to grasp anew that I am the most attuned and alive and creative and happy when I am in relationship with nature. And I know deeply now that there is no real divide between us as it had seemed up in my NY tower or during my -work-until-you-drop 20s and early 30s. There is an activity or invitation– as we say in the forest bathing world–called Bungee Bows that I love to suggest for my walk participants because it involves noticing the beings of the more than human world that are pulling on our heartstrings, allowing ourselves to be pulled to them, and then bowing before them upon arrival, as a sign of respect and gratitude. This is how I feel every day now whether out in the wild or in the edge zone of an urban area or in my yard or watering a plant inside my home.

Not to say I don’t have challenges at time maintaining my connection to nature. Disconnection can start with waves of anxious activation—more prevalent during the pandemic– that ripple through my body and make me want to hide in my head and away from my feelings. Worried and now in my head, I begin to project my shadow side on to the wild world, as if the danger I am running from, lies out there. It is of course my own raininess and muddiness I fear. With a guide or a friend or some time and some positive self talk on my side, I begin to remember that the forest has my back, than I can lean in and trust. New Yorkers do take a while to be fully trusting but I am getting there!