“Feeling and healing are really just the same, if you feel something you heal something, and then it starts again…
Wild Minding
~
I took myself off to the hills yesterday, no map, no plan, no notion that this is where I would go until I got there. Lost the walking boots I’d borrowed, so wander along through forest loam and steep slopes to roam in casual city shoes, and consider the ancestors with moss-stuffed hide sandals, or nothing.
Secret glades sing a siren call, and tempt me off the beaten track, no rush today, no destination, just following what feels right. Fall in love with moss and tree, feel them fall in love with me, poetry drips from my tongue into the listening air, given without need or care. Chance upon a spray of clover dancing in a sunbeam, honour them as living gems. Chance upon a crown of roots bursting from the soil, defiant beauty in their dying.
Upwards, onwards, the path is calling, until I peak above the trees, to the place of desolation. Mountain shaved like rusty razors to a face, machinery churning, bleak death and profit. Dare I go on into this destruction, fight the instinct to flight, to turn back to life. I sit and grieve, grieve my own destruction, the desolation inside of me that fuels my own destructive tendency. Grieve all the pain and suffering that I’ve been the cause of, acknowledge and forgive, could it have been any other way? Learn what you can, and greet each new day.
Something draws me on, I climb the corpses of forest, touching each stump’s centre ring. Get to an edge, the human fence buckled by some great power, acknowledge the unmanned space beyond. This is the boundary of the wild – a place where death is closer, and life closer still. Make my peace, some or all of me may not survive this encounter. And step through, accept your own end so you can start again.
I start on up the slope, slippy in these grip-less shoes, use hands and grass, choose not to muse on falling or finding home. Follow the sheep trails, winding, one step at a time. Question my intention, but suddenly spot a boulder perched high upon the slope, this is my goal, I externalise my hope. Make for it, struggle, and suddenly I’m home.
I’ve found my wild place, the space my heart needs to fully feel. With an animal realness, I howl and let out all my smallness into the vast cathedral sky, the deepest most anguished cry I can recall, let nature take it all. And in the space where my fears coiled and curled, love and joy unfurl like fresh spring fern. I’m laughing and loving, a wild mind in the finding. I thank the rock, I thank the sky, I thank myself, I thank this ancient mountain high, and all is well.
I’m ready for my thirties now.
~
“Feeling and healing are really just the same, if you feel something you heal something, and then it starts again…
Feeling and healing are two sides of a coin, Feeling lets your broken pieces find a way to join…
Healing and wholing are what we move towards, every time you heal and whole your soul gives great rewards…
Feeling and healing are really just the same, if you feel something you heal something, and then it starts again…”
~
Joe Blogs, 2022