#regardless of if its a trauma response or a way to destress

[tiny-merkitty]

"impure regression" it's therapy, impurity came free with your xbox

[travelingnowhereandbeyond]

“We inter-breathe with the rain forests, we drink from the oceans. They are part of our own body.” – Buddha

The eastern most edge of Captain Daniel Wright Woods Forest Preserve in Mettawa, Illinois, is home to winding trails forged by deer through dense trees and bushes whose bark and leaves vary as wildly as the shapes of gravel in a pond. Decaying logs, a single creek, squirrels chewing walnuts, bright green moss covering gray stones, vines strangling already dead trees, drapes of ivy, and white star flowers filling green and gold meadows also claim it as home. As it is not part of the main park, it rarely draws human visitors, but it was three minutes on foot from my house when I was in middle school. It was my forest. Every day after school, regardless of weather or season, I visited until dinner time. I hiked those familiar trails, and sat on logs, but always observed, belonged, listened, and sensed my surroundings.

In summer, when the humidity hits, cicadas emerge from their homes in the ground to shed their brown shells. One day, during the summer of the seventeen year cicada, I watched a daddy long leg crawl over a prairie trillium, with its burgundy diamond bloom and three dark green mosaic leaves. Something else moved on a tree branch nearby. Stunned at first, I almost left in disgust, but closer then I looked and realized what it was. A seventeen year cicada was pushing out of the top of its shell attached to the bark. I sat on the ground and watched.

So odd, ugly, and beautiful. First, its white head with bright red eyes and black dots- fake eyes, then the white body and translucent wings that uncurled. It struggled for a long time. Finally, it rested, hatched and still clinging to its shell. The delicate and vulnerable state of that cicada amazed me. I had witnessed something I’d never see again. Like so many things I noticed and learned in the forest preserve, I could not explain its significance, but I knew its beauty and power.

“If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.” – Buddha

Many years later I had a pet dog, as many people do. He was a black miniature schnauzer with two large ears- one curled back and one curled forward- a stubby tail, a white chest, and a tendency to talk too much. He was my best friend and companion for 12 years. Together we hiked through slot canyons in Escalante, camped in Zion National Park, visited The Wave in northern Arizona, leapt into the Pacific Ocean in San Diego, ran through fields and forests in Daniel Boone National Forest, and forged through the high desert of Saint George, Utah with thick sage and tall juniper trees, red rock cliffs, orange sand, darting lizards, and gray jackrabbits as large as schnauzers. We observed nature as we went, often sitting side by side, taking it in and simply existing.

“In life we cannot avoid change, we cannot avoid loss. Freedom and happiness are found in the flexibility and ease with which we move through change.” – Buddha

The day he died I was moving to South Korea. Since he was older and ill, I decided to leave him with my parents. He disappeared into the darkness in my parents’ backyard at 3 am. When we couldn’t find him, I still left, spending the 15 hour plane ride crying. By the time I arrived in South Korea in the evening, it had been a full day since my parents had discovered him passed away under his favorite tree. When my mother told me this as I lay in my foreign apartment, it was if I had already heard it. I just knew it, but this knowledge did not make it less painful. And tears were painful. Still, life moved on. In South Korea, it was the beginning of the semester in late August, so I was thrown into the chaos of starting a new job at a university, in a new city, in a new country. My grief would have to wait. Or maybe I could get over it gradually, so I thought.

Uam Historic Park sits on a ridge of hills that skirt the east side of Daejeon, South Korea. It is the gateway to a system of trails that lead out of the city’s valley into a vast forest and around the Daechong Lake for several kilometers. One can walk this entire ridge around the valley of Daejeon, should one be so ambitious, and some are. The park itself holds enough significance to draw thousands of visitors at all times of the year. It houses a school from the 1600s of a renowned scholar, Song Si-Yeol, with numerous buildings, a meditation pavilion, a temple, a lily pond, and a library museum within the secure walls. Before arriving in South Korea, I had researched the park and its network of trails extensively. Hiking would continue to be my favorite past time, no matter where I was. Like any good traveler and expat, I set the first stones for the steps to comfort and home.

Every Sunday morning, and any other day possible, I visited Uam Park and continued out on the forest paths that weaved up the mountain. I also found numerous other trails intersected each other. The entrance to one was a quick, steep walk up the hill behind my apartment. There was no excuse for not visiting the forest. Also, the chaos of the new job, and the pungent, raw city mirrored the chaos brewing inside me from avoiding my grief. Only the forest brought peace. It was familiar. Tree branches snapped in the wind. Leaves brushed each other. Dirt, plants, scurrying insects, pink flowers. Green grass, and green leaves all smelled the same. My lungs filled with fresh air and my legs burned from exertion.

And new sights gave new pleasures. Light green bamboo with feather leaves grew in clumps along the ancient wall of the park. Wooden signs in Korean indicated trail lengths. The burgundy Buddhist temple with its green painted roof sat at the top of the hill, just above the pond. Behind it, the trees rolled up the mountains. Along one of the trails above the park, there is a resting station covered by a yellow tarp under which travelers can sleep in cots, drink from the natural spring, or eat at picnic tables. Such familiar and novel pleasures patched my wounds, if only as distractions. I stayed there for hours. I wanted to live under a mound of ivy.

“Every life has a measure of sorrow. Sometimes it is this that awakens us.” – Buddha

But, one cannot live in nature when one has other responsibilities. So Daejeon city continued to stir emotions, but slowly, like a melting icicle. At the sound of a schnauzer barking from a passing car at the local market, my heart pounded, then I cried. At mentioning to my friends that I once had a dog, my stomach churned. At realizing I could stay at coffee shops as long as I wanted, feelings of remorse and guilt surged up my face, as if my blood and tears were lava. In dreams he was in danger from a snake or a flood, and I was unable to save him.

Then, finally, after two months, I was comfortable in my new home. The grief over the loss of my best friend of twelve years, who died too suddenly, struck me then, but it brought guilt with it. One night I woke crying from another nightmare where his death was my fault. I was sweating, panicky, and alone in my one room apartment with the marvelous heated floors. Frequent hikes were not strong enough bandages for the raw wound that was now hemorrhaging. I could not go on this way.

“You need to do something to commemorate him and let him go, like a ritual,” my close friend wrote me from The United States. She was right. Also, I had been avoiding confronting the pain, hoping it would go away, but no longer. I devised a plan and carried it out.

“There is the path of fear and the path of love. Which will you follow?” – Buddha

On a sunny, autumn Sunday morning, I headed into the forest above Uam Park, to a spot overlooking the lake. He walked with me as I stepped silently over roots and dry brown leaves, past outdoor exercising equipment, and the relaxing station to the top of the hill. This hike and this forest was the only thing I knew would heal me. But, I knew we never truly get over the trauma, the grief, the guilt, the pain; that is not realistic. Laurence Gonzalez reminds us in his book, Surviving Survival, “…it’s important to realize that we don’t get over it. We get on with it.” In another sense, we let go so we can make space for other things. These ideas are profoundly Buddhist. I was desperate to get on with it and make room.

The elderly population of Korea loves to hike and they were out as usual. Respectfully, I nodded as I passed them, and they smiled and returned the respect. So many people still relish the forest for the same reasons I do and did. It brings comfort to know this. Exercise produces chemical changes that can offset depression. Even the color green soothes. South Korea, along with many Asian countries, respects nature as a place to literally bathe, replenish, cleanse, and destress. Forest Bathing programs are popular, Forest Therapy centers as well. Daejeon has one tucked at the base of Mt. Bomunsan in the south.

So atop that hill I sat, unable to speak, on a rock and looked down the slope of the trail. In fall one can see what was once hidden. So many thin, new trees surround their elders. Some leaves still cling, then swirl down at the mention of a breeze. Finally, I spoke to him. I recounted what I thought were my sins- neglect, greed, and selfishness. I forgave myself, and remembered him fondly. Many words I hadn’t scratched on that paper came out. Then I ripped up the letter and buried it in a hole on that hill. Ever after, when I would walk up that hill, part of him was there and a portion of me too, so the forest had become more sacred than I intended. The ritual recognized the physical realization of grief, and the guilt. The wound was healed, but the scar remained. When I cried, it was lighter. The impurities had been drained and the emotion flowed through my body like the clean mountain spring below our special spot.

“In the end only these things matter: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?” – Buddha

For years I had found desert trails in Saint George, Utah, comforting, all of those with him. Before that there were forest trails in Indiana, and parks with pavement and manicured grass with him. Many years before that, there were the life renewing forests by my house in Illinois. In Uam Historical Park, I learned why temples in South Korea are found on mountain tops, and hillsides, tucked away from the chaos of civilization. They rest in the safe, quiet wisdom, and sanctity of ancient forests. The simplicity of nature can be emulated. Forests are full of miracles as every day as the emergence of a cicada from its shell, or the healing of a grief stricken human.

(Uam Historical Park and the forest trails. 2017)

  Getting on with It: How a Southern Korea Forest Heals “We inter-breathe with the rain forests, we drink from the oceans. They are part of our own body.”