“A walk in the park” takes on new meaning.  It’s literally an early morning, crispy autumn walk in “MY” park — the Park Blocks of Portland…the park that I have loved to walk through on the way to work, to begin my days with the calmness of nature.  A walk among my “sisters” — the trees.  They are like the wise, ancient elders who hold the secrets to the universe, who have seen it all and who have shed it all, every autumn season as they shed their leaves to cleanse their cores of everything icky.  Everything icky blows away in the autumn winds, circling, billowing, scattering down the streets, collected and burned into ashes that recycle back into the earth.

Like the walk in the park, like my elder sisters, I want to scatter my icky things to the wind — send it all exploding into oblivion and buried into the pool of neverness. And yet like the trees and the breathtakingly spectacular colors that appear on the leaves before they whither, I feel the scourge of mother nature — the same beautiful body that nourished my children and gave them life, this body is now in a kind of withering state and ready to shed the toxic icky cells.

A Walk in the Park is the symbol of ease, it brings to mind the vision of something utterly carefree and easy — no worries…it’s a walk in the park.  A walk in the park is where I go to feel that freedom, that lightness of being, that crazy-lady desire to dance about as if no one were watching.  I find this comfort today, as I walk in my park, as I do most days.  Yet, there’s something a little bit noticeably different.  As if my trees are actually talking to me today.  As if they have raised their thick knotted branches in my honor.  As if they are singing to me through their crinkling leaves.  C’mon pretty momma…c’mon and dance on your way into this journey.  You’re never alone and the more wildly you love and dance and rejoice — the more you’ll pass through it all with ease.

Thanks elder sisters, I say as I exit the park.  I feel the love.   I’ll carry it with me through my days and into this journey and beyond.