Somewhere in the world there is a place that will stop asking you things.
It’s not in a meditation app. It’s not in a perfectly color coordinated planner. And it sure as hell isn’t another thing on your to-do list.
It rests quietly among old & ancient trees, where shafts of light break through the canopy and time softens its edges.
Here where I live, we’re lucky enough to have these wooded trails winding right through our backyard. Trails that don’t necessarily lead anywhere. Trails that invite you to be a little more than you are when you walk alongside them.
This isn’t a hike. It’s not exercise that you count on your steps app. This is an invitation to walk mindfully into presence itself.
Leave your phone home.
Leave your running dialogue at your feet.
Leave your need to fix, control, remember, and plan.
Just walk.
Your mind will likely resist at first. It will cling to thoughts about tomorrow or dwell on yesterday. Your mind will grasp for entertainment because it has forgotten how to just be.
Don’t stop walking. Keep going… As you surrender to your surroundings, something lovely will start to happen.
You’ll see how the life that was gathered up in one tree becomes a home for countless others when it falls. Moss drapes the softened remains of bark. Baby mushrooms push through the splits and crevices. Invisible to you, millions of tiny lifeforms carry on in the sacred art of turning death back into life. Out here in the woods, there is no waste. Even in death, life finds a way.
You notice a wildflower pushing up through last years leaves. On top of one small petal rests a teeny tiny bug living his very best bug life. He doesn’t know about deadlines and he doesn’t have expectations to meet. He just does his thing with the life he’s been given.
High above you, birds call and respond to each other through the leaves. Their songs harmonize in a language that has existed since before words were even invented. You may not even see these birds, but you feel their presence just the same. Their reminder that not everything beautiful in this life can be seen to be truly known.
Then you hear it. Movement in the bushes. You stop. It’s just a squirrel scrambling across the forest floor. Just a bunny hopping long. Or perhaps…You never need to know what it is.
Because wondering is enough.
Life buzzes around you in the quiet magick of the forest. A bee flies from blossom to blossom. Ferns peek out from the earth, with zero applause for this performance. Mushrooms pop up where you know no one saw them grow overnight. Pine trees sigh in relief as breezes pass over their branches, carrying with them the scents of the woods; pine needles, damp earth, and maybe even the rain that fell three days ago.
Every single part of the forest is engaging in a beautiful dance that requires nothing of you except that you pay attention.
Here is where stillness lives.
Not in silence.
The forest is full of sound.
Stillness is not the absence of noise. It’s the absence of urgency. Stillness is heard in the quiet knowing that your soul remembers you are part of something older and wilder than busyness and to-do lists.
We like to think we have to go searching for these kinds of spiritual experiences. We vacation at spiritually aligned places. We go to yoga workshops. We read books. We find teachers.
And all along, the forest was teaching us exactly what we needed.
If you just slow down enough to pay attention. The forest reminds us that life grows at its own pace. That sometimes healing is a whisper. That death in one season gives life to the next.
That rest isn’t laziness, it’s allowing ourselves to be restored. That there is life after death.
That sometimes the most beautiful things in this world simply ask to be observed, rather than owned.
When you begin to walk mindfully, you start to notice something quite magical: the forest isn’t asking you to be anything other than what you already are. It’s inviting you to show up as yourself, fully and wholly present.
It might be why so many people step back into the world feeling lighter after spending time in the woods. Their burdens haven’t lessened. The emails are still waiting when they get home. Life didn’t suddenly start going their way just because they took a hike.
But something inside of them has changed. They remember that they are not separate from the living Earth. They are one small piece of a much larger dance.The trees whisper with you. The earth grounds you. The birds sing songs whether you understand them or not. And for a brief moment, you remember what it’s like to just be.
So next time you’re able, maybe take a leisurely stroll through the forest. Leave home without a plan. Leave without expectations. Leave without your desire to document this beautiful moment with a picture.
Let the forest be enough. Sit with it. Listen. Allow every ounce of your being to notice everything you see, hear, feel. And if you’re lucky, you might just remember that the stillness you’ve been looking for has been inside of you all along.
I needed this so much now. Lady Gene 
