Standing silently in the magnificent beech forest of the
Kaimanawa Forest I am instilled with a
lifeforce that rejuvenates me as nothing else does. Although I am alone as far as human company is concerned I do not feel at all alone. I am surrounded by many friends, tall mossy and quietly supportive of my feeble attempts to understand the workings of the world in which we dwell together. They of course have watched generations of men before me sit under their boughs and ponder or seek to control or change the landscapes. Often in the immediate this appears to have been successful, but sitting silently with an ear to listen I hear the gentle patience of a forest that has seen much destruction but still continues to live and replenish itself with a robust assurance of its own worth and continuity. It is this that I seek to hold within myself. This assurance, this peace that allows all the change and movement and rage around me to pass without disturbing my inner center. This is what I seek when I enter the domain of the forested mountains that surround me.
Many poets of old have acknowledged talking to trees and have been ridiculed or dismissed as crazy and I confess to thinking likewise in the past. But something in me has always sought to understand or communicate with the rest of created matter. There has always been a deep knowing that somehow it is possible to talk to trees and hear responses. I have discovered that silence, silence and stillness with an openness to receive that which your mind denies gives us an insight beyond any academic framework. This is the realm of poetry and art and only those of us willing to surrender to the creativity within us find such mystical worlds. Literature over millennium bears witness to this phenomenon. Where else do Tolkien, Emerson, Moses, Beowulf and Gibrain, to name but a few find, the almost universal images of other worlds if not in nature itself and the ability to immerse ourselves in it without judgement or limitation?
I go bush to hunt, to be refreshed and to listen to the stable wisdom of ages. It is the very essence of life to me.
