Forests

To momentarily exist independent of others is disturbing and enlightening. 

We've been conditioned to think that nature cannot teach, but can provide a space to learn; an entity to study and a means to self-discovery. 

We categorize, we identify so that the mysterious moves into the known. 

We seek the ordered chaos, to implement order in our very minds. 

Yet, we do not learn from. We do not let ourselves be taught by the natural world that surrounds -- deeming it impossible that a seemingly inanimate object -- something wild and separate from the human environment, could teach one about the self, about the world, and about our very own bodies. 

I've hiked. I've backpacked. I've sat on many shores, swam in uncounted waters, and found myself in deserts. Ice, snow, dirt, sand, mud. Steep slopes, flat lands. 

My time in nature consistently brought me to a place of understanding. Brought me.I saw nature as this beautiful, sacred, space that I could learn in; a place of peace where the mind could find clarity. 

But those spaces in nature, had clear paths, were more refined, and were places where people usually go. 

To carve my own path through nature, to submerse myself in the wild, and let myself be... just be -- that was a different experience. To go into nature, where people have not tried to organize and categorize. To go to spaces where you do not understand, and places where you have not seen, that is when you truly allow the mind to unfold. 

In the depths of the forest, you relearn how to be human. You learn how to walk, to step, to ascend, and to stabilize. Your legs, your feet, must carry you differently. Your core is more activated. Your arms must pull, grab, claw, brace, bend, and break to help you move. There is no simple, graceful, and calm arm swing. It is jagged, abrupt, awkward, and untimely. Your legs swing over and your body dives under fallen trees. The forest shows you, teaches you, how to exist as a body. As your own individual entity in the midst of the undefined. 

In the depths of the forest, your lungs breathe deep. Reminding you the power of air. The power of your own body to live. Your skin is scratched, scraped, and bruised -- reminding you of the power of that casing that holds your body together -- protects you. The forest shows you how to move, how to breathe, how to navigate. It teaches you and shows you what you are actually capable of as a body, in the simplest of terms. It teaches you that we are not all-knowing, even when it comes to knowing our very own bodies. 

To many that simplicity may be dehumanizing, or even belittling. But for me, to understand myself in the simplest form -- how I walk, jump, move, breathe, run is more humanizing than not having this connection with who I am. We see our body only as compartment for our mind -- that our mind is truly what defines us. But to understand the body that carries the mind is invaluable and is the gateway to not only understanding our minds, but having a stronger mind as well. 

Learning at first felt empty. The familiar ways of moving that I had known for the past 22 years became as unrecognizable as the landscape I was encountering. Taking these -- what we see as -- basic parts of life, of movement, and making them inapplicable, forces you to be as undefined as the space around you. From that point of indefinite knowing, being, and surrounding, you are then able to define yourself, as you define the space around you. 

And with each step of complete intention, each muscle flex and engagement, each tear of the skin, and each deep inhale of the lungs, you relearn who you are, what your body is, what your mind can withstand, and the varying ways it can interact with the world around you.