wild woman

 

By Tracie Nichols

The earth calls me.

It invites me to slip into perhaps my last winter cocoon of silence this season.

Just a brief two weeks from the spring equinox, as the soft white sky drifted toward the earth in flocks of crystalline fragments she whispered, “Settle in with me, sweet sister. Spiral inward one more time. Listen…listen…listen…”

In a few day this could be rain; by next week, mud. But for now—for this breath—there is the snow, and the silence, and the stillness.

This winter has been a particularly frigid one, so I’m experiencing the snow from indoors. My home is filled with all the sounds two adults and two young adults can generate. The washer is thwopa-thwopa-ing next to me, my husband is crunching his way through a bagel, the dryer is swooshing with a tiny squeal at the end of each swoosh. It’s an average Sunday morning with all the usual commotion.

So, it’s an inner silence and stillness about which I’m writing.

Just outside my noisy kitchen, the snow continues. The three windows strung along the back wall, just opposite our scarred, well-loved, pine table, form a frame. Beyond their glass the visible world gently transitions from a blurred pastel in tans, browns and greens to a crisp etching in gray and white.

The wild calls again.

My heart expands and I swear I can feel it beating on both sides of the glass. I am blissfully bi-located— present both where my body is and where my yearning lies. I am standing inside, breath fogging the kitchen window, stillness seeping into my bones, and I am standing outside, snow covered and wild, rooted in the frozen ground.

I am wild and woman in one body…one heartbeat…one breath. A dual experience of my humanness and my animalness.

And, if I’m honest, I think that’s what she invited me into this stillness to remember.

No matter where I am, what the season, or my occupation, I am both wild and woman. I am nature.

I am part of the living pulse of this earth—intrinsic to the All.

Photo: (source)

Editor: Dana Gornall

Comments

comments

Latest posts by Tracie Nichols (see all)