Imagine tree trunks.

I got lost once. Alone, north of Toronto, I plodded off a path to inspect some trees as I prepared for a week of outdoor instruction with a group of high schoolers who were only a few years younger, and many, as it turned out, more savvy survivalists than I. But I was the one getting paid, so fancied myself knowledgeable. I knew I was lost when two trees looked exactly the same, two hills followed the same slope. The forest somehow became a mirror.

A much longer time ago, there was a very different kind of circumstance. A nymph named Daphne ran away from a pursuer and became something that could not be violated by the approaching intention, a laurel tree.

The forest became a mirror of my own flawed intentions, my own ill care when I realized I was lost. I was astonished, once I left the woods, how personal the experience was to me, to the development of my own soul.

The human understanding of stillness is only a matter of time. Nothing is still. Trunks ripple like muscle, wind up, expand. They are always moving. Go into a forest long enough, ready enough, open enough, stumble and lose yourself, and you’ll be able to feel the movement too