Hall of Mosses (Nov 11 2020)

22 minutes - Experience of the divine/magic

Yesterday I walked in the Hall of Mosses. The shades of green so many - dark, light, bright vibrant and muted like a painters palette where the painter has mixed every shade and then added in bits of brown, yellow, gold, white and red. I always stop on the bridge to watch the green grasses and plants gently swaying in the stream - a little fuller due to the rain. It is a rainforest after all - but it hasn’t always rained when I have come to visit.

The first time - my husband showing me WA - as if he’d need to convince me to leave OH - I’d wanted to leave OH as soon as I knew there was a world beyond my small midwestern town. Of course, there was indecision about leaving. I had just landed my dream job - a librarian at a big library system in Cincinnati. I had only been there 6 months when my husband needed to look for work - his contract position early over. So he said, do I limit my search to OH and IN? Or expand the circle? I told him to look everywhere - let’s leave OH - now I wondered if leaving OH and this job I loved so much would be okay. 

We got out of the rental car  - me - my husband and my in-laws - there was a ranger walk at noon so we’d have a few moments to do something and we saw that the Hall of Mosses trail was short and a loop - so off we went - going across the bridge for the first time - sun shining bright - hitting the water - watching those bright green plants that looked like a beautiful woman’s hair - swaying gently in the water - the sound of the trickle instead of the whoosh of a full stream - watching a small bird bounce from limb to a branch of a fallen tree  - we crossed the bridge and walked up the steep trail - stopping to look at the towering evergreens - a little dry as it was September, but still, the colors so vibrant as we rounded the top of the trail - I nearly lost my breath - I gasped - the huge trees bigger than I had really seen except for the trip to CA while we were dating - but these big huge trees growing up from the earth  - roots in tangled arms and legs coming up the earth I stared up into the sky seeing these giant limbs so far up - hard to describe the scale and so challenging  to capture it in my photography but as my husband and parents walked past I stood staring up and felt a great sense of peace. 

It’s like I could actually feel the ground under my feet - my brain - normally clipping at a fast paced, alarming level was - Silent - is that was it is like to no longer have those voices - 

doubt, 

fear, 

judgement, 

loss, 

love, 

joy, 

lists, 

to-do, 

should do, 

things to remember, 

things to forget, 

what next, 

the past, 

the future, 

to worry, 

to explain, 

to miss, 

to regret, 

ought to, 

random colors, 

ideas, 

dreams, 

time and space all going simultaneously

to just - the whisper of the wind and a rustle in the leaves the sound of my own boots on the forest floor - surrounded in colors my brain is trying to describe. I could feel my inner child awaken, though I think at the time I wasn’t sure what I was experiencing because I was not in my head - I could feel my body, the weight of my raincoat, not needed on this sunny day - my boots - cushioned softly by a pile of needles and leaves and debris - emitting this sweet, damp, dark smell of decay and life and dirt - the drapes of green, yellow, gold moss, the twinkle lights of drops of rain from when - it is not raining now, but the rainbow prism of light, water, jewels on everything - I’d entered a fairyland complete with trolls and fairies and all manner of fantasy creatures - hiding holes and small worlds when I saw her - 

that grand lady maple - in the maple grove - I nearly cried because I knew I would miss my OH fall days full of vibrant color but I’d trade it for the green - green of my heart chakra - (words I did not know then but would learn) as I awakened - turning on my whole self - bringing my whole body into being - awakened by this magical place - full of all of those childhood stories, a place to awaken my body, mind, and spirit - it was true magic - I knew I’d leave OH in that moment - I wanted more of this