Tracking Wild Words In The Cocoon Of Nature…

It was the night after the soft buttery skin of the moon had made her way in wholeness across the dark blanket above. That creamy glow arose once again as I peered through the silhouette of gum leaves, perching upon wooden planks that made up the open framed tree-house out front of our property.

The transition from Autumn to Winter. Brisk, clear, still.

My thoughts arose too, not in grace and beauty like the Queen of the Tides before me, but to the fear of spiders crawling in my blanket, or traversing my clothes only to tickle my skin in surprise as they went about their nightly journey.

How strange it is, to be so disconnected from these ecosystems within ecosystems that reside all around us, and to be slipping back into these habitats; reacquainting myself to the raw wilderness that never stops ticking, only a shift in awareness and a hop step and jump away.

Wanting a better vantage point, I scrambled down to ground level, waving my staff in front of my face so it wasn’t the first to greet any spiderwebs.

Standing in an open expanse, the sparkling fruits of the night sky dangled so low that I had to resist the temptation to pluck them straight out of the dark tapestry above.

I imagined the wispy strands of textured cloud moving like a trail of ants, somehow navigating around this silver pearl that was rising higher in the sky.

I laughed at the magnificence of it all.

It was as if someone had thrown a luminescent pebble into the bottomless lake above. White smokey ripples drifting out from the center.

Eventually, stillness.

To gaze upon my own reflection; the twinkling of skyward firefly the same twinkling found if you were to catch a glimpse of my eyes. As above, so below.

Words of appreciation fell clumsily from my mouth. Some preconceived, some as spontaneous as the late Autumn rainstorm that thundered through earlier on. I listened for a response. My ears had become keenly attuned to the creeking and croaking of insects and frogs; gentle wind rustling golden birch leaves behind me.

Something interesting happens when one intentionally places themselves in the wild cocoon of nature, offering something through spoken word. Opening one’s self to a meeting with the wild. The ancient ones. The old gods.

An expansion of awareness. Extrasensory perception. Renewed ways of knowing.

Sometimes I find myself wandering down unknown game trails as those words leave my lips. Leaving behind the preconceived and tracking that wild expression in the moment can reveal the most surprising of landscapes.

While taking those moments to pause and think can give us time to gather our senses and lead us down the rabbit hole of, perhaps, more coherent musings, speaking off the cuff can allow one to pop through a veil; like descending down the rabbit hole and rising up through a fox den that we never knew was there.

How revealing that can be.

I’ve been trying not to let the vines of coherency strangle hold my wild speech. I know that staying only in the mind can be like wallowing in quicksand.

How can I use those those vines to my advantage?

Feel them; learn their texture; the way they wrap and wrangle; twist and turn. Follow their curvature and articulate them in the moment. Verbalize their gnarled form and haggard nature.

Track them, like a wild animal. Not knowing where the footprints will lead, or be lost, and what might arise further down the trail.

I think I hear a voice on the wind. Barely. Almost as quiet as the wings of an owl swooping from one oak to the next…

With each and every vine there’s a beanstalk waiting to be climbed. And what’s at the end of that beanstalk. A giant? A golden goose egg? The right kind of trouble? Aye, now that’s the kind of wild meandering I can get behind.