A Secret Chest of Hope
The forest is still now. The raging wind of yesterday remembered only by fallen branches and ruffled leaves. Crisp underfoot, clear above. A blanket of cold silence pressing the life force further down, further in.
The sound of my own breath and slow footfalls threaten a disturbance to the sanctity of quiet in this wild temple. The surface appears to be an endless funeral. Leaves no longer able to capture sunlight strewn across the ground. A cornucopia of nuts rotting in the damp earth, the meat devoured long ago by the squirrels and worms.
A scattering of twigs and branches ripped from their homes by the blasting winds lie atop the leaves. Grey. As I pick one up my chilled fingers recognize much of it's surface is not bark but a micro-forest of lichens. Old Man's Beard, a soft, sea-foam green stands out as life, still living.
Feeling the relative softness of his fronds I am reminded that death is not total,
...among the devastation lies that which will continue.
Below the sodden soil surface are scattered an orchestra of seeds, roots and rhizomes carrying an ancient lineage. A genealogy of adapting and thriving, passed down through endless rotations of the earth. Silent now.
Unseen by human eyes. Untouched by the light of the sun. They wait. A secret chest of hope. The promise of what is to come.
Letting my imagination wander around the wheel of the year I see them: Bloodroot, violets, ramps, black cohosh, goldenseal, mayapples...
Down there in the dark they contain everything they need not only to survive the winter but to burst forth into spring in their multitude of shapes, colors and medicinal properties. A template of total regeneration.
Up here on the cold surface I search for my inner chest of hope. That dark place inside where I keep the hopes I dare not speak. Hopes so precious that forming them into sounds risks shattering them. I know that sometimes the conditions become favorable enough for me to speak one of them into existence, and there are some that have been in there a long time.
This winter time in the forest reminds me to go visit with those secret hopes. Gently whispering to them that I haven't forgotten them, thanking them for the promises they hold, the templates for a new life. I reassure them it's not their time to be spoken now and offer the possibility that their spring might come some day.
I hear them sigh. Sweetly returning to their slumber while I return to the reality of what is - now.
When did you last visit your own chest of secret hopes?