WHERE THE EARTH BREATHES!

I dreamt last night of the ranch in northern California where my in-laws live. It was a dream of walking on a dirt road through the forest. Nothing special you might think, but extremely special if you take close notice. Because that is what happens when you walk through the woods in a place where there is nothing but Nature—and trees and squirrels and deer and bear and birds singing and a few snakes and spiders and assorted bugs. You notice those things, but also the flowers and the grass that moves in the wind. And up above, the tall trees reaching up to a blue sky that seems to go on forever because it does.

And, when you’ve walked enough and run out of thoughts and things to say—you’ve been talking to the trees and the grass and the bugs, and then finally to yourself—then you begin to feel the Earth breathing. You notice that it is a living, breathing thing, just like a person is and that it is very cool to be walking around on it, almost like you were a bug crawling around on someone’s stomach.

And then at night, although you are tired from all the breathing of really pure air, and all the walking—and you’ve gone for a swim—you walk outside to bathe for a bit in the starlight. And there is where you honestly begin to feel how the world we live on is an organism. And why this is important is because all that happens on this Earth is part of its life of which we too are a part. We as a bug on its stomach find our food here and our allotted breaths of air are gifts given us by the Planet as well.

When I walk along the dirt road on my in-laws ranch, I notice this stuff—which doesn’t seem to occur to me in my living room in Connecticut. I look forward to following the wind, which blows towards the west. I look forward to walking under the trees, to talking to myself about things that don’t amount to a hill of beans, to standing outside at night and thinking of counting the stars but knowing that would be a waste of time, that just breathing is the most important thing—and feeling the Earth itself taking its own deep breath.