A fall trip to the lake is my favourite time of the year. Sure, floating in the water while the sun warms you into a crisp, then napping the afternoon away while a fan blows is a wonderful weekend spent, but it’s hard to feel connected to nature during those months. You’re hot, sticky, worrying about spending as much time in the water as possible, worried about wasting away the summer days. Yes, bathing in the lake while baby loons played about me has been a highlight in my life, and I felt so close to the original world around me, but that’s not the everyday. I’m not a Disney Princess with a passel of animals ready to make me laugh and serve me. Wouldn’t that be amazing, though? What I’m trying to say here is that summer is great, but in the fall, nature brings out her most colourful, crisp, cozy, happiness.
In the fall, my priorities change. It’s not the water I’m seeking, but the closeness of the trees. I want to feel wrapped in their embrace, I want to hear the birds and squirrels making noise, playing, and singing, and jostling about.
I need to ground myself in the Earth. I need to feel that quietness deep into my soul. With less people milling about, it’s easier to sit in silence, listening to the birds chirp while a hot mug of coffee warms your hands. It’s easier to listen to the trees talk, the rustling of their leaves providing the perfect background noise. This is when I feel most relaxed, most at home here in the middle of the woods.
I don’t need to read any studies on why Forest bathing is so good for you. I can feel it inside myself when I take a walk through the woods. When I sit and just listen. Even while sitting in a man-made structure, snuggled under a blanket, just smelling the Earth, the leaves, listening to water lap at the shore while trees whisper, I feel it. I feel the benefits before I’m fully immersed in it. I feel my body relax, my mind let go of everything. I breathe deeper, I smile more, I feel absolutely and wonderfully content. While for me, complete happiness is open fields and prairie skies, for a lot of people it’s the hustle and bustle of city life. I’m sure if you plopped them down in a forest, made them comfortable (to whatever that comfort is to them), they’d feel the same. Dropping the phone, breathing in, and connecting with the world in which we try so hard to run away from.
There’s a spot in the cabin, the breezeway, that I call my home. There’s one wicker chair, an old log used as a foot stool, and my complete happiness there. Curling up with a good book or magazine and my coffee is my favourite part of the time spent here. I look forward to it before we leave, I think about it before I go to bed, snuggling under the blanket while the quiet radiates through the air.
But, my chair faces away from the water, the magnificent lake views that the whole cabin revolves around. Instead, it points towards the trees, the small path that leads to the road. It is there, in that view, that I find the most comfort, where I feel most at home.
Juniper and Daisies 