Layer Cake of Death and Memory
Stopping to take in the turning forest, the sun warms my back. I watch a yellow leaf, cradled by the breeze, swaying to the ground. It comes to rest atop those from last year and those already turned to soil. The bright yellow contrasts with the browns and blacks of it's more composted relatives.
This spot I'm standing in holds layers of memories for me. A conversation with my lover, a moment of reverence with a group of forest bathers, a hawk sighting, mulling an old memory in a moment of quiet reflection. Memories stratified into place, held tenderly by the soil, moss and tree roots, available for me to access as I pause here.
Digging my fingers in, past the new yellow leaf, through the wet, crumbly older brown leaves I find the cool soil. There is no line between leaf and soil but a transition zone. At the top there's more leaf than soil, lower it seems to be more soil than leaf. But really it's just more leaf that's been munched on, pooped out, mixed with microscopic bits of rock and dead bodies, alchemized by the worms, beetles and tiny unnamed beings.
The smell of of the wet, brown stuff on my fingers brings a flood of unbidden memories. Running barefoot as a child, planting seeds this spring, laying to rest on a mossy patch many summers gone by. Memories of other places coming now, called in on the wind by the interaction of my mysterious nasal apparatus with the molecules released by my grubby fingers. More layers to be mulched into the ground of this place, into my psyche.
Digging deeper I encounter the tiny, hair roots of a nearby Maple. It has been drawing nourishment from this dark mush, this layer cake of death and memory. Now its life force is retreating from the branches, sinking down into the roots, seeking to overwinter in the depths of the storied layers.
Roots grow into the soil forging new pathways, as do earthworms and tiny scurrying ones. The memories are not static. They keep being rewritten, chewed up and spat out over and over, woven together with other matter, new events. Threaded together with smells, colors and associations they form a living tapestry, writhing with meaning.
As the tree drinks from the soil so too am I watered by the collective memory tapestry. Seeding bed for who I am becoming, soil layered with who I was and might have been. Digging my roots into the old memories, the old stories, I gently rearrange them, find the versions that will best feed next year's leaves.
What old stories are pulled up for you by the falling of leaves? And what versions of them will serve you best going forward?
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