An Experience in
Nature
By Irene Manz
A few minutes away from our house there is a clear, opalescent mountain
stream rushing past. A wooden footbridge leads to its opposite bank and a
narrow path leads upward between the wooded hillside and the stream. It winds
its way up the steep slope, across the treeless meadows, all the way into the
wintry forest.
Deep down below you can still see the green mountain
stream as it flows through the snowy meadows. All around venerable,
glacier-like mountains seem to send their greetings in this early season.
Icy white, gilded by the sun, the highest peaks are gleaming while the dark, fir-trees slopes already lie in the shadow of the mountains.
On the path that winds upward steeply and through deep
snow, flecks of sunlight flit among groups of trees. Snow bursts up and
trickles back down in a glitter as branches rustle and whisper in the breath of
the wind. Merely a soft breath floats through the woods and is audible only to
the finest ear of one who is accustomed to listening to Nature’s great holy, silent
secrets with bated breath and a grateful prayer in his soul. Nature still
lies in solemn stillness, and all life is still in the deep sleep of winter
while the softly thawing snow precedes the first longing for Spring. The sun’s
rays are still pale upon the thawing winter splendor. Yet here and there its
warming rays softly lure and awaken timid sounds of birds. A soft chirp here
and, further up, the start of the first finch’s tender song.
The solitude in this forest is so mysterious and there
is a white transparent ethereal figure softly floating ahead of me.
Here, in the forest, far away from people, they look
at me sometimes, Nature beings, elemental beings, and the pure luminous guides.
My sight is being opened up to their quiet work and activity. As I am
looking at the ground I see a little white man next to me. He looks at me with
a friendly smile, his small hand pointing at the uneven, slippery ground as if
meaning to guide me. Feeling more secure and as in a dream, I walk beside
him and a conversation begins to develop.
I do not speak to the little man, he does not speak to
me, in loud words. No. Only concepts seep into my consciousness and my mind
forms them into words; yet I hear his voice and I hear my own responding.
“Are you always here in the forest?” I ask him – “and
do you stay here?” “We live here deep inside the earth, in trees and in
bushes, in the roots of the trees. We cloak ourselves with the material in
which we weave; we adapt ourselves; we weave and live and are one with our environment.”
So speaks the little man. “When the snow melts I turn grey; when I don my
green frock, the sisters call for the flowers to grow!”
I see the ground as through a glass and I see life
beneath the snow, seeping, gurgling, murmuring; roots are stirring, the earth
is breathing and delicate luminous hands glide over the bare, frosty,
grey-green meadows as if in blessing.
Blue-eyed, a timid little star pushes through the
ground to look up at the deep-blue sky; low-growing white anemones unfold their
white petals just above the ground and tiny little yellow flowers are climbing
up and clinging to the earth mounds. The flower elves are luring the first
spring flowers from the earth – over there, across the still snowy meadow, they
are pulling yellow, white and violet veils. The little man points over there
saying: “that’s where the crocuses will bloom.”
“Will you guide me there too?” I ask him. “I
will always guide you” I hear him reply. “to all the flowers, and I will
tell you of their qualities and their uses - then to the berries and mushrooms,
provided you will always be as alert as you are today. But I must go now for we
are at the border.”
They never cross this “border”; although they are
active everywhere they do not show themselves. For man no longer understands
them
I
did not say goodbye to him, I know he will guide me again when I am ready.
