A walking meditation: this little route gives me hope
I start at the bridge, watching the
water, thinking of now and all it is. Yellow is the colour, the colour of
sickliness and fear, but here bright in granitic sand lining the stream bed,
the gleam of mallows in the April sun. First thought: clarity and flow. Quick
movements of nature while we slow down, a reminder of true rhythm.
The first path is through a small
wood. I move into green. How this colour flows differently into the leaves of
spring, the freshness of new beech spurts, the acid of moss, the deep vibrance
of new grasses. Still the darkness of winter in holly and ivy. I have lost my
closest person to the coronavirus, my grief is still green and new. It can only
grow.
At the top of the path, I choose the
right fork into the tiniest of valleys, down steeply in shade to a minute
trickle of water, up steeply into dappled light. My knees feel the gradient,
adding to the stiff joints of mourning. This small interlude is of everyday and
the mundane, a beaten earth path, the basic ups and downs of life moving us
between beauty and disappoinment, between heartache and love, these necessary
intervals of heightened emotion and extra demands. My heart beats faster on the
up. Breath is another sort of up and down. We are forced to relook our now.
Now the way is very narrow between
banks. I think of confinement, a negative connotation, and then of boundaries,
not so bad. Here the path divides a field just ploughed and a tangle of wild
scrub. The tame and untamed, the contrasts of lockdown where we long for mad
outstepping, and the needs of growing food through disciplined work and
management of time. Both are essentials in their way. The making of land calls
it. I long for the uncontrolled, but my need for rage is gently diminished, as
I tread through.
At the end, I stop. A beautiful oak
is getting ready to bloom, on a gilded spread of celandines. The next throw of
the path is obscured around a sharp bend. This is a pause before new knowledge.
My grief is soft and settling in the stillness. Things are happening quietly
around and within. A bird reminds me of melody. An encouragement of song, that
stirs my tired heart. Half life is on fire, the other half is burnt and gone.
Around the corner, the sense of more
up is daunting. We imagine sunken ways downwards. I have the sensation that I
have shrunken within these banks. Trees are huge sometimes. But I feel
escorted, a ribbon of bluebells at my ankles. There is always path as long as
we can walk. Here I am just the little brown thing waiting to green.
Second pause. Everything so far has
been immediate. From this point suddenly I can glimpse across the valley the
houses at the top of town, and my mind surges out. What is yellow and green in
the world right now, what are the boundaries to be faced, the vistas cut off,
the friendly access denied? If compassion were contagious. Any path can lead
anywhere because our minds are beyond restriction.
Back to now and here. Ahead is a
tunnel of foliage stretching uphill to where it will end at a little road, and
just before that the rock that is my marker, my goal. I am feeling the rock
from a distance through a fug of horse smell and the wasted effort of recently
severed tree trunks. The rock is still, waiting for me. I can finish with the
touch of a friend.
Meditation is over. I turn back, and
at once the dog runs up for his treat, part of it all again.
