Alone in Nature: Healing
16 years ago, my brother died and my world fell apart. Most of us are not really equipped to deal with catastrophic grief. I wasn’t.
After floundering through the details of ceremonial requisition, and fighting with anxiety and all manner of the mental health challenges of trying to “stay strong” for others, I sought refuge in the only place I knew that always provided comfort and solitude.
It is river ground in South Sac County Iowa, owned by my family, and we call the place “Wikiup” in deference to a discovery that there was at one time indigenous peoples — the Sac and Fox tribes — in this area. I can’t remember if there was hard evidence that the flat hilltop overlooking the Raccoon River was sacred place or burial ground, but either way, it feels true.
In the weeks and months after my brother’s death, many evenings, I drove the 3 miles to this spot, parked the truck and walked. A purpose came upon me, to build a sweat lodge in this sacred spot. I dug a hole, about 10 feet in circumference and a foot deep. I ringed it with large rocks that I carried from every corner of the 20 acres of timber and grassland. Cutting saplings I used bits of wire I found to make a hoop structure to cover with a tarp.
The sweat lodge was never finished, and probably for the better as I wasn’t schooled in proper construction and likely would have asphyxiated myself out there alone. But it the process was a huge step towards healing.
I also tried my first real meditation. Sitting crosslegged in the South East corner, atop a deep ravine with a creek at the bottom. I imagined a big hand, under me, holding me up and giving me strength. I had absolutely no guidance and no idea what I was doing. But it felt good, and relieved the pressure.
Maybe this is why I still yearn to wander to relive, perhaps a to escape, perhaps to rejoice. Today I took the long walk through Wikiup and found the hole I had dug, now filled in with 16 years of sediment and plant cover. The hoops long gone.
Perhaps I went here because it was place near to his heart, and I hope to find some piece of him here. After all, he was a wild man, a wilderness man, a hunter, a fisher, an explorer. He loved this place as I do.
Today, I find log and meditate, much more practiced and able to find the calm easier. I sit and the wind pushes in my left ear. My orientation is slightly Northwest noisy forest becomes still, or does my mind become still?
My thoughts wander at times as I did it for years ago and ask where is the path? Where am I going? The answer comes back “You are here, it is now”.
As I ponder the answer, I am startled by a ring-necked pheasant cry. I hear the breeze and bird chirps, and leaves, rustling and dancing. I feel things.
I noticed it when I return from the meditation, things slow, I am slower. Having just returned from seeking the same peace in nature in the Sonoran desert, I think that this place called Wickiup is as far from the desert as anyone can imagine and yet it is the same alone as alone can be. Tree speak the same language as cacti and the grass carpet is the same as the sand.
As I slide through the forest, half expecting to see Govinda or Siddhartha to impart glorious wisdom on me, I crush and crash like a beast lost in the wild I’m alone.
The lesson today; alone can be as painful is you make it, or it can be a celebration when it is shared with birds and deer and trees and grasses and memories in nature. It heals.
