In a park where one river flows into another, I spread my modest feast: rice and quinoa salad with chicken, a homemade pumpkin cookie and a small bottle of Prosecco. A friend was to have joined me but called to cancel.
Although I’m on a solo picnic, I’m in good company, surrounded by chickadees, blue jays and flickers. Bouncing around on the ground is a group of nuthatches, normally seen creeping down a tree trunk, beak-first and solitary. Sunlight slants through fall foliage and the sweeping river reflects more gold below the opposite shoreline. From a distance, I hear the chirring of the belted kingfisher, a feathered friend who has favored me with flybys throughout the summer.
Samara is right: when you’re in nature, you’re never alone. Samara, my friend and spiritual mentor, who invites me to dance from my inner being, to drop from my head to my heart and to immerse myself more fully in the mystery and joy of nature to heal and to grow.
My tablecloth folded and packed, I make my way down a flight of stairs leading to a river path. I am greeted with more wing flutter and birdsong. A single leaf falls from an ash tree, drifts and settles on the silver river. The tree is in transition from green to gold and the trunk has a lean, extending over the edge of the river. The sun replicates itself on the water, a luminescent sphere that will gradually elongate into a path of brilliance.
Is it the wine, or is the ash tree actually beckoning me? I accept the ambiguous invitation and settle my body against the length of the trunk. I feel the rough bark against my cheek and relish the ruggedness. I take a deep breath, inhale the woody fragrance. My fingers nestle into the folds of the furrows—how neatly they fit, like a glove–or is it love?
Every cell of my body surrenders to the solid strength in that leaning tower, roots anchored deeply in the earth, limbs reaching skyward. The kingfisher rattles. I turn—there it is, just to my right, perched on the branch of a dead tree. With a flash of grey-blue, accented with white breast band and shaggy crest, it darts past me along the curve of the river.
An inaudible voice tells me, “Your dad is in this tree.”
No . . .
Wait—Samara’s words come to me: drop from your head to your heart.
OK . . . breathe . . . listen.
“Your dad is being made whole.”
My dad, who hurt me so deeply so many years ago? My dad who could not love and nurture me the way I needed?
My dad is being made whole?
“Your dad is being made whole.”
A trickle followed by another, grows into a flood of tears. A release—no torrent of rage, no tidal wave of grief or sadness as in the past. My emotions tumble over the brink like a waterfall, cascade in freefall, smashing wild into the waiting river. Water meets water, river absorbs the rush as spirits connect across a great divide.
I turn my head and there is kingfisher, now to my left, on the branch of another dead tree. He rattles, then flies off with a flourish.
Tears turn to smiles. I wrap my arms around the tree. It’s not just Newton’s third at work. I know I’m getting back something from this ash. It is holding me with immutable assurance, with utter trustworthiness. I finger the furrows again. Yes—it’s love—definitely love.
A pair of kingfishers glides past me, in perfect unison, graceful, balletic, their nature shining in the fading orange sunlight.
I look down and see that the tree has lost a large portion of bark at the base. I run my hands over the smooth surface where the tree has suffered the loss of its protective skin. I feel the shock, the vulnerability, the pain.
What unknown wounds did he suffer? How many secret scars did he carry through his lifetime? How did those scars bend him?
Yet—he built a life, a meaningful life in so many ways. He courted and married my mom, a beautiful soul with so much love and compassion, so much strength. Together, they built a life, raised a family. They made me—their union brought me into being. Without him, I would not exist on this heartbreakingly magnificent earth.
To my knowledge, my parents never danced in their life on earth, restrained by religious conviction. I wonder if they have found their wings and together, fly over rippling rivers with grace and freedom and—did they, for a moment, join in a mystical dance with one of their beloved?
Somewhere in the distance, kingfisher answers.
