This is a re-posting from this time last year. Anahata had their 2nd Annual Summer Cultural Evolution Camp. I attended this first year (last year) and wrote this to commemorate the impact on my life.
Writing from the Anahata community, Floyd, Virginia
At the conclusion of Summer Evolution Camp.
(c) 2010 Howard McQueen | Version 2.2 8/31/2010
There are places on this earth
fully ripened,
ready for your initiation into inter-connectedness,
ready for you to claim and co-exist with as your HOME.
Gracing and extending your connections beyond the domain and dominion of humans,
the vast natural world is ready to interface and be a lover's embrace.
The invitation is to open to and be infected by all manner of mysterious phenomena,
emerging from and being organically nourished by the Goddess Mother - Gaia.
AN INVOCATION TO BE WELCOMED TO RECEIVE THE LAND
The first fall leaves float by on the river, infiltrating and embracing my earth suit.
I am buoyed as well as immersed in this liquid life-giving force,
flowing and caressing the everything that is me.
As I focus my attention on listening,
way back up the hill, the chicken run erupts as a hen loudly cackles,
boastings of her laying let another magnificent egg.
My focus shifts back to visual,
to the river’s flowing surface, where,
in the reflected early morning light
water bugs glide, rapidly darting about,
doing their living rhythms.
From my more macro perspective,
their rhythms express a coordination of play.
I sense they are also inscribing and visibly expressing a language,
appearing if but for an instant, on the rivers surface.
Yes, this defies all rational understanding and yet, intuitively,
I smile and am warmed inside by the insidious play and pleasure
knowing this is how nature plays out her rhythms with all forms:
Invisible forces flow into and animate form,
for the sheer joy,
for some vaster, symbiotic, symphonic interplay.
Morning sunlight filters through the forest canopy,
revealing and illuminating the hued colors of the pebbled riverbed.
Rapids downstream echo their frothy spill.
Crickets in trees play their percussive electronic washboard sounds.
Something upstream breaks the rivers surface with a plopping sound.
Memory from last nights cacophony surfaces, with the primal screams and screeches
as two raccoons squared off to fight over the bucket of dinner scraps yet to make it into the compost.
The sweat lodge,
the picnic table,
leaves in slow motion floating down from the sky.
The shimmering of a few select trees moved by an invisible wind
in the midst of complete stillness of neighboring trees.
Ahhhhh, this page is itself curls up, levitated by the winds visitation.
A plastic childrens bath tub, imprinted with Donald Duck underwater in swim goggles;
A white plastic chair,
a white bucket,
two blue kyaks,
a blue laundry basket.
We humans, inhabiting this land with our human-manufactured possessions.
A forest green tarp strung between trees, the tarp's top speckled with spent, dried leaves.
Near vertical support poles, cut from trees, staked into the ground and tied with twine.
Nested under the tarp a woven multi-colored hammock, currently spun tightly closed,
inviting someone to enter and seek the restorative vitality of cocoon. It too is tied to two other trees.
This natural tarp-hammock honors and graces the land, bringing such a sense of
relaxed and sacred harmony.
As I start walking toward the sweat lodge,
A blue butterfly and dragon fly appear to grace my path.
A variety of butterfly cavort over the ashes in the firepit.
There is the circular ring of stones, a big glass cider jug of water
marking due East.
A small shrine just outside the sweat lodge entrance hosts a variety of artifacts:
part of a jaw bone;
candles,
smudge bundle;
a black snake replica,
shells,
feathers,
Tibetan coins,
lambs ear, zinnia and other air-drying flower heads.
Back up near the main house,
just off the circular drive,
my eye again finds the slightly worn path.
I step off the gravel into light brush,
Passing a small tractor attachment half covered over with thistle.
I step, viscerally, into enchantment.
Grey brown trunks of naked white pines, easily seventy feet high, surround me.
Down the sloping hill, beyond the fall of the land,
is a lush, verdant narrowing valley, bounded by the serpentine river.
Here the land is hosting a small tent community, a primitive kitchen and,
part way up the hill, on the left, earthen toilets. .
I am imagining a two story tree house resting in this space,
built around and encompassing several key foundational pines.
Mmmmmmm!
What a residence.
What a contribution to the larger sense of the land itself as my/our interim,
gypsy-symbiotic home.
I notice a bee-as-emissary investigating my presence.
After gently waving it to create space, I notice it stays in perfect unison with my waves.
This is the dance of first contact. I stop waving now, knowing we have synchronized intentions.
The bee now advances, landing directly on this page of paper I am inscribing.
It makes tactile connection with several words I have just written, seemingly taking a
sample, somehow extracting the wholeness of message from its extraction.
I imagine this message being relayed to everything the bee interacts with, this message
permeating and percolating till it rejoins the hive, which initiates a widespread distribution.
For me, this is an exchanged blessing for a human expressing the intent to be in peacefully
co-existence with all of nature.
The thirty second walk back up the circular drive
opens to a lofted greenhouse and the large modern home.
A wooden vine trellis has been trained in the shape of a heart
graces the front entrance to the house.
Across from the house is a shop with a second story loft. Along the roof line are solar panels supplying the energy needs of the main house.
I resonate with all of this and breath in, slowly and deeply,
then silently mouth the blessing “Welcome Home, loved ones”.
There is an infinity of presence awaiting us, as we surrender our contrived equities and identities and release and relax into these moments with nature ...
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