I stepped through the door and into the Otherworld and
looked at my feet. I was barefoot and I
wore a long linen tunic, natural in color but, embroidered with patterns of
leaves and spirals in shades of greens and browns, russets and gold. There were feathers braided in my hair and multi-colored
beads of wood, stone and bone hung about my neck.
I stood on a grassy hill in the warmth of an early summer
day and a path stretched out before me and disappeared over the rise of the
hill. I followed the path as it wound
its way around the hill and down to a wooded hollow. When I followed the path into the shade of the
trees, I came to a rushing stream with a large Willow on the bank trailing its
branches in the fast moving current.
I stepped into the stream and stood there with the cool
water flowing past my legs. I looked
into the clear water and saw a brook trout, spotted and small, swimming but
unmoving in the deep pool behind a rock.
And then suddenly, I was the Trout.
I felt the water, filled with oxygen, flowing through
me. Into my open mouth and out through
my gills. I felt it moving over my
scales and, with the simple flutter of my fins, the current’s flow made it
effortless to swim in stillness behind the Rock. And then, I was the Rock.
I could feel the earth holding me and the sun warming me,
and the water flowing around and over me.
I could feel the delicate, supple, new branches of the Willow brushing
against me as they trailed in the current and then, I was the Willow.
I could feel my branches trailing on the surface of the
current and brushing against the rock. I
could feel my roots deep in the earth taking in the water and reaching out all
around me. I could feel the sun on my
leaves and the energy feeding me and the breeze playing with my upper branches.
I watched the sunlight play upon the water and, a Heron flying low along the
path of the stream and then, I was the Heron.
I flew through the air with barely a feather moving. I glided along and landed gently and stood on
thin, elegant legs in the depth of the water, seeing into the current, watching
for fish to fill my belly. And then, I
was myself again, standing in the middle of the stream, water flowing past my
legs.
I stepped out of the stream and onto the bank. I said farewell to the Willow and the Rock
and the Trout and the Heron, and followed the path back to the grassy hill.
I felt stronger than I have in a very long time. The wildness of the place fed me and filled
me and freed me in a way that I have been needing for so very long now. I returned with a knowing that I must renew
my connection to all that is wild, both within me and in the world around
me.
While I am working to transform the structures of myself
and my mundane life, I must never neglect to feed the wild inside me. I cannot wait until life allows it. I cannot allow the demands of my mundane life
to be stronger, to take more from me, than the work I am truly here to do. I must feed the fires of the wild heart until
they are so strong that my mundane life is a small and pale shadow in
comparison.
