Tohickon Creek Archives - Page 5 of 5 - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

Hovering Roots

In my recent quests to go a bit off the beaten path lately, I’ve been walking on roads that I mostly only ever drive upon. Some roads surrounding my home are only in my awareness as intersections, since they are veritable ‘dead ends,’ therefore giving me no good reason to drive down them.

Today, though, I walked down one of these dead end roads and fell in love with the scenery. I know I’m going to be including this offshoot and walking it much more frequently, mostly because it is blissfully without traffic but also because it traces the route of a tributary to my beloved Tohickon.

The tributary, replete with massive stones piled on each other in such a way as to create terraced waterfalls, flows peacefully right into the Tohickon. But before it does, it burbles and trickles its way alongside the road, dodging massive trees and monkey vines, basking in small pools hosting hoards of peepers, and feeding life all along the way.

Mirror? Or Shelter?

The photo I’ve included tonight is one I took early this evening. The subject caught my eye and in some sense feels like it’s mirroring me. I was going to say ‘rootless,’ but that’s not quite accurate. I have roots, as does this tree. But somehow, in some way, the soil I’ve relied on to keep me grounded is nowhere to be found.

Will new soil arrive, carried downstream from fields further up? Or will I somehow need to find a way in which to seek new soil out?

Or the third option, I suppose, is to remain as is: roots hovering over the surface of the stream, nourished when the rains come, then holding space in the drier times, faithfully creating space for other lives to take refuge in when there’s nowhere else to hide.

(T-957)

Silence

When was the last time you spent some time in a place where there was no internet connection? And beyond that, no cell service whatsoever?

Karl and I are sitting before a glowing fire that’s alternately snapping and crackling then spitting and hissing as snowmelt drips down from the top of the chimney. We’re in the main room of a cabin on the bank of the Tohickon Creek. The rushing intensity of the water’s flow as it courses like roiling magma toward the Delaware from right to left just yards off the cabin’s porch is drowned out by the monotonous intensity of a cataract cascading down the rocky boulders of the cliffs across from us.

The creek is at the crest of its banks, filled to the brim from the more than half foot of snow that snuck up on our region only two days ago.

Lack of Choice Brings Liberation? Sometimes…

Darkness has descended upon the forest and when we open the wooden door to fetch more logs, the voice of the creek fills our ears, sounding as if it might carry the cabin itself into the river, as recently chilled air pushes past us to ripen at the fire.

We’re literally only five minutes from our home, but the isolation from electronics is incredibly liberating. And part of that liberation is in our lack of choice. We don’t have to “think” about it one way or another. We don’t have to exercise discipline to resist clicking to check on the latest state of our world; we don’t have to choose to put our devices on airplane mode. We can just be.

It’s an odd feeling, especially for me. I’ve been vacillating for weeks, knowing I’d rented this cabin for the weekend and earnestly wanting to share it with my friends and family, possibly even clients or readers of my Hoot Alerts, who might yearn for an impromptu Listening Retreat. I kept asking Spirit: “Should I offer another retreat? Should I gather my Ayllu*?”

Permission to Just BE

And it never felt quite right to do so. So I didn’t.

It feels a little selfish of me not to share this beauty. This isolation. This opportunity to just be. But I know, intellectually, that we need to take time for ourselves. Maybe we need to be a little bit selfish sometimes, in the sense that we put our need for silence first, ahead, even, of the amazing joy it gives me each and every time I lead a Listening Retreat or Ayllu Gathering.

And that’s where I am as I write this. The meeting of my head and my heart; the place where I allow myself to take a step back from listening to others and give myself permission to listen to the silence.

I am grateful.

—-

*Ayllu is a Quechua word for a band or group of people who share a common lineage or set of teachings and experiences, a concept similar to a “tribe.”