Weeping Rock Trail - A Walk

         Leave the Hurly-Burly behind. Leave the television, the noise, the hustle and bustle of crowds. The drug commercials that promise you'll dance in the street or sunbath in the Caribbean. If only you buy our drug. The face cream that promise miracles; every wrinkle turned back thirty to fifty years. All the cons that offer a product that will make you the absolute sexiest man or woman in the world. Instead take a walk on the wild side.

        Enter the deep quiet of a forest where life and death exist as an ongoing continuum.  A communion where each grows into the other.  Amazing how life breeds death, and death feeds life. Observe trees standing while slowly dying.  Dead limbs lifeless and hard. Sprouting from the trunk the fruiting body of the Pheasant Back Mushroom or Oyster Mushroom fungi that live by eating dead wood. 

        Some find the bosom of God in Nature. A place to lay a weary head. A deep quiet settles into my soul as I walk slowly trying to see and hear everything. At the start of the walk a new find at Blue Mound. Yellow Lady's Slipper where Trilliums bloom. In the same rich wooded area found earlier Round Lobed Hepatica and Trout Lilies, later in spring Bellwort, and  Cut Leaf Toothwort. Sinking into the moment the wind hushes through tree tops. Music from the heart, a bird sings. The singer remains hidden high in the maple canopy. A Red Admiral Butterfly, flits, dances around my legs while I try to get a picture. The glorious beauty of wild geraniums. Momentarily a Scarlet Tanager presents itself before flitting off.  A Jack in the Pulpit then a large white May Apple blossom hides beneath an umbrella of leaves. All in a glorious forest dominated by Sugar Maple Trees.

    Click on the picture of Round Lobed Hepatica at the top of the page enter the calm reality of Now. A time of total acceptance. Join me for a slow walking meditation. I sought the morel mushroom without finding any, yet being in the moment I settled easily, joyfully into serenity. 

    Ps: No background music just the natural sounds of footsteps, birdsong and occasional voices of other hikers.   

Anthony G. Hendricks, author, poet, nature lover -- naturally;  Buddha Blues, recently published with a great cover created by his Sister Judith; available at Amazon as print on demand or as an e book at Amazon or Kobo. With formatting help on cover and interior by Woven Red. Other books The Wasteland Revisited, a book length poem about the dystopia causing global warming; available as an e book at Amazon; A Journey In The Human Dilemma, collected poetry and prose; trade paper back.