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Rites of Day – The day walk

by Jul 22, 2019Tree Blog

Rites of Day: The Day Walk

I set off, taking a route I believed to have less people. At the beginning of this journey I only saw one person approaching ahead. I paid them no heed and they veered off track and disappeared before we reached each other.

I passed 2 different species of Oak tree; Quercus robur (Common Oak) and Quercus petraea (Sessile Oak); picking a leaf from each which I carried the length of the journey and took home.

I stopped at the ¼ point about 1 mile into my walk. Gazing across the wide river, through long dead Sycamore trees still standing in the river flow, roots long flooded. I noticed a central island in the waters. In my memory this was usually a white stone beach, but now a green miasma full of plant life and insects. As if 2 contrasting darker shaded vats of green paint had erupted from the earth smothering the coldness of the rocks!

Approaching my ½ way point, my eyes roved across volcanic rock in a garden wall. The question still lingers in the recesses of my mind for a deeper understanding of why this million year old rock gave me my answer, on that day, on that afternoon; my foundation from which to grow.

“The agent causing the wound, like the lightning spark, smolders in the dark shield of the fall, in the labrynths of my memory.

Whenever this story is told, there can be a purging, a burning of unhealthy psychic tissue.

Tendrils of flame grope toward the fresh air.

Healing, upon this memory, is underway.”

On my return journey, I looked again through the dead, drowned trees that once were life. To what had been the green miasmic island full of colour and buzzing insects.

Now almost fully submerged, the river had risen. Weed tips gasped for air.

New life dies and is replaced with new life. Another cycle begins within an infinite cycle.

I am beginning to learn to live within the seasons, myths and monomyths of this strange, fascinating, often painful and joyous world.

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