RETURN TO THE WATER

The earth called out to me just as the last bit of sludge came loose from the baking pan. Drudgery. Dishes, laundry, piles of paper. Day in, day out. The nine to five. Buzzing, knocking, ringing. The rat race we all exist in like jittery little rodents in a cage, with wild and free earth just outside our door. All we have to do is open it.

Summer was in the air. The daily grind could wait.

And that’s how I came to be in the forest that day. I left the soap ring around the bathtub, the return parcel on the table, and the grocery list unfinished. All those things that I thought really mattered.

I found a trail in the forest where the path was wide and the dirt was the color of chestnuts and I followed as it turned and twisted around fallen logs with great hairy beards of moss and tiny creatures bustling around on rough hewn bark resembling Lilliputian villages. A lone pink flower poked its cheerful head up from a boulder on the path and I stopped to watch as a minuscule drop of water slowly worked its way down the stem into the little mud bowl at the bottom.

I filled my nostrils with the scents of the forest; balmy pine, the sharp smell of sap; thick, rich earth. I remembered my mother and how she had taken me to the forest when I was very young. And to the water. Always to the water. And she taught me about life there.

I recalled her perched on one knee at the rivers edge, blazing hot summer, the buzzing of bees. The air was filled with the sweet scent of wildflowers; the sun bearing down into a glint on the surface of the water. She was wearing a blue gossamer scarf over her golden hair, tied just so. I, her five year old tomboy in pig tails and ratty cutoffs. But she was always a lady, even in the great outdoors. How elegantly she picked through the rocks at the waters edge, examined one carefully, then tossed it aside and I watched as it arched out gracefully from her hand to create a tiny “plink” in the water, followed by a ring of symmetrical ripples.

“Agates are the ones we are looking for.” She said.

“What do they look like?” I asked her.

“Like people.” She laughed. “People that are a little bit dressed up. But they might be dirty. Life does that sometimes. And that’s okay because we can wash them off.”

“The people?”

She pondered this. “Well, yes, people too. People get into all sorts of things in life but they can always be washed off and start over, all clean and shiny.”

And then she exclaimed “Look! I found one!”

I went to her side to marvel at the lovely stone but also to feel her close to me. I leaned into her and felt her soft cheek against my face. She smelled of sod and bergamot; of sunshine and of soap. I remembered her leaving the laundry on the line and scooping me up that afternoon and hurriedly packing a picnic. When I asked her “What about cooking dinner?” She said “This is a beautiful day. We will not waste it.”

I pondered the years she had been gone now and how life had continued of course, but never quite the same. Yet, here in the woods I remembered her ever so vividly. I smiled at the recollection of that one magical day by the river. In a single day, she had taught me so much.

I could hear the waterfall before I could see it; bringing a sense of anticipation as I approached.

I came around a bend and startled a tawny doe and her fawn as they lay hidden in the waist high cool of the grass. They bounded away without a backward glance and I thought of my mother again. She was there at the birth of her first grandchild, my eldest son. She held him for the first time and marveled at his wonder and newness. And she told me then that when she had given birth to me, her doctor told her that cells from both mother and child somehow embed themselves in each other forever. They literally become a part of each other in a bond that can never be broken.

“It’s amazing what you learn as you go” she said with a smile as bright as the midday sun.    

Suddenly it was there before me. Breathtaking and majestic. A high mountain creek that had arrived at a fifty foot cliff and had nowhere to go but over it. For me. For my eyes to behold; my senses to become lost in. The forest above and the forest below. Twittering of birds filled the air with busy and joyful sounds. Clicking and chirping, scolding and praising, they permeated the trees with their language and their purpose.

The trail meandered up to the waterfall, and then behind it. I found a large rock and sat behind the wall of water which was framed in evergreen foliage. The mist gently caressed my skin. I closed my eyes for a moment. The thundering waterfall blocked out all sound except for itself.

At a place between actual memory and intuition, I found myself back in my mothers womb, those many years ago. Just for a millisecond in the silver flowing waters of my birth, I was reconnected to the essence of my life with her. The musky, mossy scent of earth whirled about me in a cloud of incense as I approached the watery veil and placed my hand through it, then my shoulder, and my head, and then all of me. The cold water was both an immediate shock and a wake-up to the rest of my life. I was drenched and I was happy all at once. Filled with joy and wonder. The ferns at my feet were caught in a breeze and I danced with them.

And I learned to open doors.