http://vimeo.com/2323323

Stretching through land older than the time we measure – bringing with it the poison and the sickness that we so willingly take on – there is a buzzing sound emanating from them, around them, through them. the wind sounds different when it swings around these giants, the wind sounds angry as it whips them with it’s being. all along the desert taking from  the runoff to fuel lives way way down below. an electric stream of  “progress” so backwards that it takes away in order to create a disconnected way. under these towering, amped up giants lies the evidence of the sickness creeping in. the broken bottles of shattered dreams and the filtered remains of polluted souls.

north fork winding through the canyons warmed by the hues of the life springing forth giving to everything so that it gives back to you. in the ripples of the wake, flowing with the life that sparks and speaks inside in an embrace on the sandy bottom two newts come together to move the story onward. on the banks of your bushy, manzanita surface tucked into the coolness of the earth your medicine plants thrive with the life surrounding. the soft, fury, mint green leaves touching my tounge and closing my eyes i’m transformed, taken into the heart of where i am  tasting and feeling the river flowing past, the sand under my feet, the newts in the water and the air that we breath.                                                           

 One of my favorite things to do with my most loyal companion, Sid, is to take a stroll up the hills behind where I live. Time after time something always reveals itself to me. On one of these walks my attention was drawn up towards this oak that had made it’s home in a rocky, sloped wall of earth. I studied the tree for a minute and then laughed out loud. There in that tree was one of the goofiest faces I’d ever seen. Comical, comfortable and light-hearted. This tree, which had rooted itself in a spot unlikely to be very supportive of such life had really made a home for itself. This tree spoke to me of it’s life and it’s message. This tree was there just being a tree for the sole purpose of just that, being a tree. It cared not what it looked like, because it is living for itself – it is living to be exactly what it is regardless of whether or not it looks funny on the outside. In that funniness was comfort and knowledge. That tree was being a tree for itself and for no other reason or want. In that observation this wonderful  tree told me to live for the self, to live for the act of living and in doing so there is freedom, freedom to be who or what you are, freedom from worry about what the outside world thinks or wants, freedom to live in your own dream.