Seashells of the Forest
on forest walks, death preceding life, and giving thanks
Walking through the forest, my mind is covered with burdens, like the decomposing downed log beside me blanketed with colorful fans of fungi cascading down its length.
I pause to study this spectacular sight - how many pass through the forest and never see these stunning displays?
Now, I’m considering the importance of this decaying log in nature, the many roles it plays, even while dying; even while dead.
In the natural world, so much life depends on the death of something else. These mushrooms wouldn’t grow if they didn’t have the deadwood to consume for nutrients.
Kneeling down, I’m reminded of this fungi’s charm and am captivated, again.
Years ago, I affectionately named turkey tail mushrooms, ‘seashells of the forest’ because they elicit the same admiration and affection I have for seashells, with their lovely concentric rings, each one representing a year of life, a year of growth, in the most pleasing forest-color palette, like seashells with their own pleasing beach-color palette, shapes and layers of life and growth.
Suddenly, I’m rubbing a turkey tail between my thumb and index finger, delighting in its velvety fuzz, likening it to something with eyes and a heartbeat. I’m closing my eyes, remembering the many seashells of the forest I have encountered in my life and how they always draw me in; beg me to experience them. My eyes open and it’s as if the rich raw umbers, olive greens, burnt siennas, and deep ochres are new colors my eyes have never seen as they explode to life on this not-so-insignificant natural object.
I can’t help but grab my phone to try to capture its captivating beauty but I already know a photograph will not do it justice. I’ve taken many photographs of the natural world that merely sit in my phone, with so many others, bringing glory to nothing.
I take one anyway. I take 10.
Yes, they didn’t do this masterful creation the justice it deserves so I have no choice but to take a photo with my mind and heart.
…It’s enough to capture the essence of something so profoundly beautiful, so simple in a big, wild world, with only your mind’s eye, to store only in your heart, you know.
It’s more than enough, it’s the perfect thing to do.
And, it’s even more perfect when you have nobody to share it with. It then becomes your treasure, stored in your heart - in your treasure *chest*, and that makes it even more beautiful and even more like treasure. Nobody needs to see it because that takes away the treasure that lingers within you. Just for you. And it will remain there until you want to pull it out again, and use it, as I have done, in this moment…
The beauty in this forest, happening all around, all the time, reminds me of a little anecdote Annie Dillard shares in her book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She tells that one day, she had just rounded a corner to suddenly witness a mockingbird taking a single step off of a four story building and then watched it plunge down to the ground without spreading its wings until the very last minute when it flew up and landed gracefully in the grass. She says, “The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”
And so I’m reminded that we are only passers by, with our heavy burdens, walking through the forest for what: a therapy session, a place to think, a place to see, a place and time to work something out? But then, the forest doesn’t stop for us. We would be so wise to stop for it.
The path is becoming more and more littered with crunchy leaves that are a day or two down, pushed off from their life line. They, too, will decompose and melt into the earth to supply nutrients for life.
In the natural world, so much life depends on the death of something else.
Now, I’m realizing the burdens I had carried into this forest, are melting, too.
And I breathe. My mind clears, even if only for a few moments. And if I’m wise, and can carry this peace with me, I can let what needed to die, die right here in the forest, so that I can welcome the life that will come from its death.
I give thanks now, on my forest walk, because that is the appropriate thing to do…because that is what my heart and spirit now need…
Thank you, Lord, for this beautiful, wordless encounter, and how you’ve placed these treasures here, knowing I would be here, too. Thank you for your goodness and glory in creation. And I especially thank you, Father, for death that brings forth life, and that your son died the ultimate death so I can have life. I feel you here, with me, now. And I thank you for your sustaining grace. Lord, help me to surrender these burdens to you so I may walk lightly, with life. In Jesus’s name I pray, Amen.