by Timothy P McLaughlin

I waited and waited a great while
before I knew enough
about listening
to hear the bright ones
speak,
and only faintly at first,
so I wasn’t sure if anything
had happened at all.

We have made the walk from water to earth many times as humans, yes? I think about how we came from the ocean as a species. We grow in a fluid inside our mother’s wombs similar in makeup to the ocean before we ever take our first breath. And we walk the Medicine Wheel each and every year from the water of the west in autumn to the earth of north in winter, until our very last breath. 

By Rachel Baird

I am writing from the Holy Isle
Just off the eastern shore of Lamlash, 
Isle of Arran, Scotland.
During Green Tara prayer hour
I let the waves of chant wash over me and quickly moved into a lucid dream.

I dream of the whale:
Out in the dark waters
We are capsized by forgetting,
She swims to me
And puts my hand in her mouth,
Begs further exploration -
I feel the brittle curve inside her sinew
Like playing a harp
Or building a wattle,
Then choose to climb this baleen fence,

I grew up just blocks from the Ocean in San Francisco where I walked the beach nearly every day and was lulled to sleep at night by the sound of fog horns.  Sometimes, when in the water – I could feel these wave pulses of energy moving through my body and sometimes, at the shore, I could feel life forms moving far off inside the ocean.  I knew they could feel me as well and were communicating.  

My mother was holding me looking at the waves when suddenly a huge wave broke over us. The shock and sound of the wet spray gave me a baptism I never forgot. I grew up on two islands, one urban,the other rural, and at a very young age I was diving into the waves and buoyed up on their crests, or watching reckless teenagers jump into the East River trafficked by tugs and cargo ships headed out to sea. 

We offer gratitude to Ocean, the one great Ocean of the world, whom we call by so many names. Grandmother Ocean, thank you for Life! For the lives of our most ancient ancestors whom you cradled and fed, For the lives of all who came after, who stayed in your waters or ventured on land. For the lives of all the plants whom you water through the clouds, and for the  tiny phytoplankton who give us breath. We thank you Ocean, for the lives of all our relatives.

By Laura Williams

We all have a longing for the wild but we are trained by our industrial consumer society to consider ourselves separate from Nature.  We are taught from the beginning of our lives that we, humans, are both dominant over and in danger from the wild. 

By MR Baird 

I have descended out of the Northwest
Back into civilization
Sounds of cars and jets,
Weed eaters now hurt my head,
I don’t belong here anymore
Now that I think of him,
That stag,

By Lauren Valle
To My Enlightened Self

Silent self, self made of stone
Self that witnessed the birth of the ocean and
bathed in the torrents of mucus and blood
Self that melts the boundaries between her own beauty
and the beauty of the world

By Emerson Gale 

On  March 10th I spoke with Sally J. Mark, “Sal” about how to share the truth of plant sentience. Initially, I wanted to interview her to learn about the Music of the Plants devices from Damanhur,www.musicoftheplants.com for which she has been facilitating workshops around the country. 

By Timothy P McLaughlin 

Here, in the wild, where there’s almost no chance
of another human stopping through,
where there’s no hopping round
patterns of perception or acceptance, 

By Rachel Corby

There is something that has been happening to me throughout my adult life. That something is an increasing feeling of aliveness and wonder. Although it existed strongly within me for every moment of my childhood it had begun to weaken in my teenage years, leaving me bereft, alienated, lonely, confused and depressed.

By Kate Gilday

I pause before stepping into the forest, halting to listen, to take in the beauty before me, and breathe in the fragrance of the evergreens welcoming us with outstretched branches.  In these few moments, before entering this wild place I ask permission to step onto and off the path ahead, to wander among the trees and through the streams we will encounter.

By Timothy P. McLaughlin

In the effort to become more like water,

I’ve taken to walking the dried arroyos of New Mexico.

Gliding along their twisting, sandy trails,

following the water’s worn tracks round trees and brush

and endless rock,

We offer gratitude to the Wild. For the rare and sacred places on earth where true wilderness reigns. Forthose edge places on the borders of our gardens and our consciousness where the wild interlaces with the tame, awakening us with inspiration. For the indomitable Wild that creeps or flies or pushes up through the pavement even into our cities, reminding us of Lif

By April Thanhauser

Come home!

Where are you hiding?

Behind the ferns?

On some stony peak I didn’t climb?

Are you in the fish’s mouth, the night glint in my cat’s eye?