green places in the mountains

The forest is alive. Sometimes, we pass though breathing thickets that are the most brilliantly green places I have ever seen. They glow green. The breathe with the wind and the rain and the hundreds of waterfalls and drips and trickles that flow through them like blood to join the wild artery of the river that connects all. The trees grow like beautiful line drawings, their branches curling in the most exquisite, complicated, graceful visual forms. I like to walk slowly through these special places when one graces our trail. I listen and I look, and I know a more magical place I have never seen. I feel invisible things alive in there, like spirits floating calmly and unseen. Very old spirits. Ancient truths of this world. And when I walk through these places it is so obvious to me why they are here, and I feel them with such sureness and clarity in my soul. This is what people mean when they speak of someplace magical. Magic is when you can see things with your heart that you cannot see with your eyes. Some kind of whispers wash into me, and my body knows centuries of stories, all at once. You know when you are in a sacred place. It is an overwhelming bloom of life around you, a profound embrace of peace. It is like stumbling unexpectedly into a hidden room where the air is silver and made of mystery, and you barely want to breathe lest you clumsily disturb the perfect energy of this secret, innocent place that is much older and wiser than you. You just stand there and soak in its incredible grace, thankful for this beautiful chance meeting between you and your forever home.

The world knows my every step, every breath, every heartbeat. And with each one, I tie myself closer into her story — the One Story that renders every small being and event indistinguishable from all the rest. The One Story that can be felt so clearly and powerfully sometimes, when I stumble into one of these glowing places that are its windows.