In the Stratosphere

I don’t know about all of you. I just know about me.

I know that yesterday I was in the woods looking up at clear sparkling drops of water hanging on the hemlock needles, mist all around.

I felt then the beauty around me, the preciousness of the moss, the softness of the air, the browns, greens, and grays. A cathedral of nature.

I have crawled far out of myself. Far out into the stratosphere, where it does not hurt. I am standing in the sky, a perspective of a million years between me and the grief of my body. My soft human body that has endured and continued.

I know there are clouds of confusion, minds that cannot see. I know there are so many who do not understand that humanity is one tribe, that each person is a potential friend.

But it is the forests that inform me. The community of trees and mushrooms and mosses and beings. The lichen, water, and leaves. The small wrens darting and the Douglas squirrels. It is the danger to them that most breaks my heart. The 500-year-old trees that will be cut down. Entire ecosystems at risk. My heart breaks daily for humans, animals, trees, ecosystems.

I have not even begun to consider what this means for other humans. The rise to power of one who is filled with hatred and division. Whose desire for power is greater than anything else. I think back to the time of the Nazis and Hitler, a time only 85 years back or so. A blink of an eye. I see so much pain in the world.

We do not learn so quickly.

I can feel the tears now. I feel them rising from my heart through my chest to my eyes. I feel my tears for all that will be broken, for the wave of pain that will rip apart like a hurricane, a tornado. I feel tears for a darkening that will destroy much.

We learn slowly. The wheel of karma turns. Perhaps those who do not realize that we are all one will have the suffering needed to help them see.

I will go back to the stratosphere for a while. I will get lost in moments of my work, of hunting for mushrooms, of caring for my aging dog and husband. I will push aside this particular big grief, of watching a species without wisdom continue forward.

This piece was written in Grief Writing Sundays with Diane Zinna on November 10th 2024.

First published in Substack.

Also published on Medium.com