Wild Devotional

Contemplations on connectivity and home

Winter sun blushed peaks rise from a dark sea. Fresh snow left by the recent storm smooths alpine ridges and stone peaks, glowing lavender, then coral with the sunrise. Glaciers hunch like ancient ice dragons, hanging from mountain tops and stretching long tails into deep carved valleys. Bright, clean, turquoise ice, compressed into impeccable purity throughout tens of thousands of years.

Sitka spruce and hemlock wear cushions of clean white. They adorn the mountains below the treeline as if painted there with delicate and precise brushstrokes. The full moon sinks huge and crystal clear toward the mountains, tinted pale purple with the rising sun.

A great blue heron rises from the rotting dock, lifted on a wide, sturdy wingspan. It settles into a graceful glide out over the inlet. Sea otters drift by, the cracks and crunches of their late morning meals echo to me across the water. The one closest to me stops and sits upright, treading water with ease and surveying me suspiciously. I say good morning and let her know I am no threat, just here for the view. She is not convinced and arcs her water-slicked body to vanish beneath the glassy surface. The calm water of the sheltered bay must be a relief to them all after the storm.

Days of rain and heavy snow driven by high winds battered the coast. At night the wind rattled the house, knocking things off shelves. The house creaked and groaned with the force of it, keeping me awake. The walls shook, and I even felt my bed shake with the particularly powerful gusts. Winter storm systems brewed in the Gulf of Alaska make landfall here, unleashing torrents of snow and rain that can last weeks.

I gazed out at the now calm sea, reflecting blue and sunrise pastels off smooth, gentle wavelets. I wiggled my cold toes in my boots and looked down at the layer of ice beneath my feet shaped smooth by gentle lapping waves. I bit my lip to hold back tears. A myriad of emotion rose in my chest, both peace and longing. Gratefulness and frustration. Nostalgia and hope. I have never felt I could find enough ways to say thank you. Never felt like any of my offerings of gratitude or experience with this land and sea was enough to convey what it truly is to me. Even what I write will fall short, because what are words to this truth? Only a reflective approximation. Only a feeble gesture toward the magic and mystery of the real thing.

My being is made from this land, this ocean. The water in this inlet makes up the cells of my body. The calcium and nitrogen of the wild salmon that return faithfully to these rivers make up my bones. Protein from the bodies of moose and Sitka blacktail deer have become my muscles. The cold oxygen I drew into my lungs at that moment came from the kelp and algae, the mountain trees, the river delta willows.

When I meditate, my consciousness returns here. The deep croaking caw of the raven is my mantra. The crash of waves is my sound healing.

This is it. This is the living spirit, the One. This is me. All the same being. I try to see this beauty within myself, to give myself the sustenance of this connection. As without, so within. My devotion to Nature, to this place, is my devotion to my Self, for my Self and Nature are one in the same.