Somehow at Home in Nature

Though I'm visiting alien lands, if I focus on nature, I feel at home. Though I can't communicate with people around me, somehow I can commune with nature. I feel the space around my body extend and flow into the trees and fields and clouds. They receive my energy, breathe it in and then, softly, whisper back to me, and the perfume of their breath is so sweet.

In Wales, riding in the back of the car on our way to Snowdon, I ceased to focus on the conversation of my companions and my personal worries, and became still, my gaze and my concentration resting lightly on the passing countryside. I felt the border between me and nature open, and, like kids playing in the schoolyard, teasingly jumping over the marked line and then running back, some of my team chanced a walk on the other side and some of nature ventured towards me. I felt a humming that, to my delight, turned into a song. It sounded like a folk song, though it was new to me; and I couldn't make out the lyrics, though perhaps, again like a child, I molded some of the unfamiliar sounds into English words. Nature sang the song to me, with melody and chorus and beautiful changes in harmony until it had played out and I was brimming with feeling.

I sang the chorus to myself until we were climbing Snowdon, and I tried to keep myself open to more, though I realized I also had to interact with humans once in a while. I haven't figured out how to combine the two, though I know they must be combined somehow. During a difficult section of the climb, surrounded by steep hillsides and big, open sky, I felt the aliveness of nature again, and I tried to listen using that part of me that had heard the song. This time I saw, though, rather than heard. I saw a trail other than the one in front of me, flowing upwards, and when I focused on it, I could climb much more easily. I felt more of these presences in the surrounding countryside, glimmerings of something magical. But when I talked to Rashed, I lost my focus, and went back to huffing and puffing up the path; walking then felt like lifting legs of concrete rather than dancing with the fleet feet I had felt for those few long seconds on the shimmering escalator.