Taking A Forest Bath
Have you ever done it?
Have you ever sat out in a forest or a woods, all by yourself away from the sounds of the city and highways, and listened to it? Doing nothing but letting the forest where you are, soak into you.And listening.......listening to the sound. It's an amazing experience. If you never have, you should try it sometime. It's my version of taking a forest bath and the cleansing feeling that is experienced is wonderful.
My own personal theory that I like to believe, is I am hearing the sounds of the living Earth. Trees, some that were saplings when Christ lived, still stand and etch the sky.
Being able to reach out and touch something alive and healthy that old, is a feeling of connection to the Earth like nothing else can produce. And therein is the cleansing and an almost unbelievable freedom from stress.
In one respect, it reminds me just how tiny and minuscule I am in the scope of it all, while also telling me it wants me there, that I am important to it.
Becoming one with our Earth happens nowhere better than in the forest ...........and that is a Forest Bath.
~Wayne
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Wayne, I know exactly what you mean. I have been doing this all my life.
Our family moved a lot and in remote areas mostly. I can still remember going out into the wilds with the whole gang of kids (and an adult or two if we were heading to the river).
Later on, as an elementary student I would spend the weekends wandering through the woods and just sitting. One of my favourite memories is when we lived at one mining camp about half way up a mountain.
Way back in those days TV was rare and iffy in reception. The camp (7 houses) had one antenna almost at the top of the mountain that redirected the signal to the house antennae. When reception got really bad a bunch of adults, with we children tagging along, climbed the mountain. Every so many yards (pre metric) someone would fall out.
The exercise was that the top person would yell down the slope to the next and so on until the message reached the houses. Someone there would shout back 'we are ready'. Then back up the hill until the top person tweaked the antenna.Back down the hill that was shouted. This continued until the reception was fixed.
Now did we children get bored. Never. The whole area at the top was full of the tallest trees with long straight trucks that reached to the sky. Branches started way, way up so there was no hope of climbing the tree (mind you having fallen out of many trees that was probably a good thing!)
As this activity could only be done on a sunny, clear day the whole scene was fantastic and ever so calming.
Mind you everyone kept their fingers crossed in the winter. We would have needed to be helicoptered in. And that might have been buried in snow when it landed. But I bet that scene was spectacular too!
Thank you Helen.....how nice of you to send me this story. I still to this day love to be deep in a woods, far off the road. And I sit and listen to it.......it always speaks. Always.
Wayne