When I am make a sensory memory with a place, I feel connected to it. I remember the images, the feelings. The way the sunlight dappled through the trees stays with me. Watching a tiny snake at a creek side over twenty years ago is still fresh in my mind.
Places that we can visit regularly become part of our spiritual practice. This park, this river. Those trees. The funny signs, the bridge. I come again, and I see how it is the same, how both it and I have changed.
These nature connections can take me to a higher plane of being, or maybe back to another memory or of a special person.
Is it flowing water, rustling air, chirping birds or crunching leaves that can transport me? Maybe it is the combination of them all together, and me there to experience it all. And I feel, just for a moment, like I am at the center of it all. I am part of nature.
Small and large, the whole is in the parts. The parts are all the same. We are all connected. We are all one.
Are we the trees? They are us. The trees can socialize in a group, talking among one another.
The natural icons that surround us reflect us; we identify with them. They are part of us. We are part of them.
Each piece combines to be a part of the whole, to enrich everything.
Autumn strips back the lushness and reveals the structure of nature. We can do the same thing by stripping away the unnecessary in our own lives and in our selves. We can flourish when we remember our structure.
Nature works together and reflects the kind of community we want to build.
I am calmed. I am elevated. I am at peace with myself, at peace with nature. I am even at peace with the melancholy of the coming winter.
Photos taken at River Park, Millersburg (Dauphin County), PA on 11/5/2016 by Brian Tomlin.