As I walked past the extraordinary sequoia trees, I had to stop and listen to the wind blowing through the leaves. It brought me back to my grandma’s house, where in the summertime I would climb into her hammock tied to her apple trees and listen to the wind wrestle the leaves, as a big grin appeared on my face because there were no boundaries of responsibilities or of competing in the daily rat race. There was no watching of a clock and keeping track of time, only trying to walk down the road in a straight line.
Those were the days when every morning was a new adventure and I had no expenditures. Those were the days when I could run around and felt as if I were a bird and could touch the sky or I could hike into the forest just to have a good cry. The smell of the fresh herbs were all around, as I embedded them in my memory so that when sad, scary things happened to me, I made the smells of the forest come back to my mind and abound.
There is no judging in the forest, as it is immune to your imperfections and it accepts you just as you are and you don’t need to prove anything to it, like you would to a parent, who keeps you emotionally afar. The reason I stood still in the forest that day, was because I thought I heard water or a particular sound that made me want to stay. As I searched as far as I could with the human eye, I realized when I looked up, it was the comforting sound of the river in the sky.