Life can be lonely lately. Health, friends, loved ones, communal wobbles, the state of our world – an undercurrent of loss seems to be everywhere. But I discovered I can still recognize magnificence, even when unexpected, and I can enter meaningful dialogue when I’m out walking in the quiet places.

Surrounded by a manicured boxwood hedge and hidden in the shade of old oaks, the statue waits for me at the highest point. She doesn’t adorn a grave. She just is: a gleaming piece of art, mottled marble beneath a patchy canopy – a harsh light among the sea of tumbling, swirling leaves that come down like a shadow veil upon me, and her.

The tops of her feet – bare – nap snugly pressed against the earth. Her soles – wise, wide – peacefully inhabit open space. It’s her shoulders that carry the weight of this world; sturdy and muscular, they frame her square back, a back used to lifting and bearing and enduring. She hides her face in the shadows of her hair and the caress of her capable hands, forehead resting on her knuckles. Broad arms embrace her own form. It is obvious that she’s of the ages, of wisdom, of survival, of hardship. Possibly of eternity. Has she buried children? I ponder. Or a mother, a father, a husband, a friend? Maybe her true self?

She seems as old and as young, as innocent and as knowing as the planet. Her belly, hidden beneath a flimsy shroud, speaks of children she’s carried, the hopes she’s nurtured and lost. Her sadness is as deep as her neck is thick, and I wonder if she’d like to get up to stride upon the meadows with her naked, reliable feet to feel the grass, the dew, the dirt, all the beautiful pebbles, the tiny miracles that lurk beneath. Her being here speaks of the before-women who walked their paths and sang to the heavens and tended to fires and ran with winds and flowed with waters and became one with each other and also with the stones beneath their toes.

But, I realize, she’s also weary, so tired, like the oaks that are releasing their leafy burden with a seasonal sigh. She deserves this perpetual rest. She’s the mother of all mothers, sister of all sisters, daughter of all daughters. If I still my feet and plant them for a breath pause or two, she tells me her secrets. She hums me her tales. I let her whisper and when she finally goes silent, I allow my feelings to fall where they choose to. There are tears, sure, for the grief, the losses, and the worry. There are smiles, too, for the beauty, the joy, and – yes! – ample gratitude. She doesn’t raise her head, but in communion, she listens to my noises.

The sun sets upon the decaying oak leaves to illuminate scattered mementos and memorials: plastic geraniums here, a family crest there. A flimsy wind chime. A faded toddler’s toy. An absolute absence that surrounds the women, and me, on this hill. But with it comes presence. There is a sameness in this otherness, a connection in this solitude that gives me the strength to gather myself without agenda or expectation. I dive into the peace and greet all of these women, those before me, those now, and those to come. I thank her for her solidity and her steadfastness, this ancestral, marble woman who patiently awaits her mortal guests, and then I amble on.