The Twelve Senses in the World of Nature
Silence stillness immensity
forest stretching endlessly
snow covered, quietly breathing its tremendous, wide, conifer expanse
And the sough of wind rising and falling
Most beings here – plant or animal – are melded into this spacious and soul-purifying landscape
As is the human
But the human is also, at least in part, separate from the land.
And human nature can discern, by way of the 12 senses, aspects and nuances of the natural world through these 12 portals.
The snow sifts down into the forest, falling windless and so light as to seem almost weightless, afloat in place. A deep silence holds sway, an ocean of stillness that invites entry. And there is space enough here for any size contemplation.
In the northern, boreal realm, across this endless range of semi-homogenous evergreen forest radiating its steadfast and grounded, robust energy – across the conifer deep – here and there, an accent counters the etheric expanse with an astral focus, an animal being – raven, jay, squirrel-hunting marten, wolf, moose, or chickadee.
Tracks in the snow tell the stories. A snowshoe hare nips birch tips from a fallen tree. A luxuriously furred marten pursues a red squirrel. Unless the squirrel quickly makes it to one of its underground dens it will become the marten’s meal.
Sometime in the night the wolf came near. It came to investigate who was howling in the evening, howling like, yet unlike, another wolf (it’s own sense of language revealing that, although the sound of my howl seemed very similar to a wolf’s, there was a subtle difference). It came near enough to discern the scent of human presence,