Interacting with Nature

I went on a short hike this morning and considered: How do I interact with nature?

I used to just sit in it--perched, really.  I'd tiptoe through and weave around nature, afraid of touching it that I might ruin it.

I feared engagement with nature because I feared wronging it.  I'd forgotten how to interact, so I disengaged, thinking that was safe.

But how does on learn without wronging; how can one learned disengaged?  One cannot.  If one tries, which I have in the past, to live without wronging, one gets ... an anxiety disorder.  Because humans wrong things and one another in order to learn and grow, and a repression of that wrongdoing is a repression of the spirit.

Now I set my spirit free--inviting mistakes, allowing free, unsuppressed learning.  I am set free, chipping off bark from a tree and smelling.  Free to climb over rocks, eroding them with my boot-steps.  Free to sneeze loudly among the birdsongs and to pluck off pine needles for a taste.

Through engagement with nature--physical, hands-on engagement, I invite it into my life, my soul.  In the place where that fear rested just above my solar plexus, an expansive emptiness emerges--ready now, filling up with bird songs and the sound of the wind through the trees and the citrus-bitter-delicious taste of a blue spruce needle.  

The clean mountain air is seeping into my cells, purifying the blackened buildup of fear and uncertainty, transforming my molecules into quartz crystals or something clearer.

I'm watching trees grow, rooting deeply into the earth to allow for expansive ascent--it is my wish to become a tree, bearing fruit with which I might nourish others.  

A grand transformation is occurring here between snow and sun, a pure white light envelops my body. 

I emerge, truer than before.