by Rebecca Cooper Lazaroff | 1/3/24
One day last summer I was on a hike that I regularly go on, and found myself noticing the changes: what had come and what had gone.
Where a trickling stream had been, was now a thick, mucky bed, and the woods that had thinned over winter were now dense with rich, green foliage. And then around a familiar bend, I came across a stretch of purple blossoms. I had never seen them before and had I not come upon them just then, I might not have known they existed at all.
But I guessed that The Life of the Forest knew. Likely the birds, insects and small creatures who made home or use of the flowers in some way, they all knew. And we all knew, at some point a change in weather would set off a chain reaction and the flowers would begin to die. Or, maybe it would be another event: depleted soil, a thick strangling vine, or too many hungry insects. Whatever the catalyst and conditions, the flowers would eventually stop blooming, the leaves would curl, and the life pulsing through the stems would contract back into the roots and soil.
I laughed to myself thinking, if you dropped in from another planet and didn’t know better, you might see the blooms die and think, “Well, that’s it. They’re gone now. The end.” And when the small purple flowers bloomed again next summer, would you just sense somehow the life and death of the last flowers had fed the new ones? I’ve come to think of my own life like that, as a garden. An organic, evolving consciousness on a continuum. Each season feeding the next.
It’s January again and the mountain ridge near where I live has a particular glow in the morning light on a clear day at this time of year. I thought if I were to recreate it, I might use an underpaint of sunrise tangerine and mix a purply-brown to fill in all the hibernating trees across it. There is so much radiance in its stillness.
Just days ago, I was in the dwindling energy of 2023. The various threads of my life I’d worked so hard to cultivate last year were losing focus and form as I turned my attention to the New Year, largely based on what did or didn’t happen the past year, or years. But, what’s really new about it? My life last year is the very reason I stand here as I am this year: strong, tired, vibrant, sad, ready and/or reluctant. What’s alive and what I’ve let go of has created the very soil I can’t help but grow from this year.
So, I wonder if I can be like the sunrise on the mountains, still, radiant and resting as I prepare to grow. And I wonder about the word New as I become more curious about using words like Now and Next. Who am I Now because of how and what I’ve lived and what’s Next? Where does my life force want to go?
Rebecca is a student of SoULL and beautiful writer. Many thanks, Rebecca, for this piece!
