Gaian Healing Being: Mountain
After the flux and flow of illness, I return to mountain and gaze west across the Samish Bay to islands rising from the Salish Sea. In response to this expansiveness, tension in my body uncoils. Sapphire silver waters mirror mountains across the bay. To the south lies an emerald valley. Around me, fir trees lattice against the grey sky. The rhythmic tapping of a woodpecker in a dead tree rings out as I breathe in the scent of fir and wet earth from a recent rain--the weather so changeable in contrast to enduring mountain.
Ancient bodies of mountains have stood as guardians through many ages of geological time. An outcropping of metamorphic rock reminds me of what lies beneath forests that have come and gone, felled down and rising again, layered upon solid enduring rock of mountain. Each peak has its own shape and offers its own viewpoint. We humans ascend, by foot, by wheel, to look out at expanses far and wide. We are given the gifts of perspective, of overview and firm solidity. And when we are on the plain below, we can lift our eyes up to the mountains and be uplifted in return.
Rock-steady, this mountain I stand upon is the body of Gaia, which the Greeks called the firm foundation of all that is, forever. We are made of Gaia’s body—Her salty seas in our blood, our tears, our sweat. Her carbon in our bones, Her breath in the air we breathe, Her living waters in flow through us. We are fed by her bounty: Her flesh becomes ours. Gaia’s coding unfolds through our lives, held by Her. In death, she absorbs our decomposing flesh and bone or ash, our bodily elements reabsorbed into Her, re-constellated as new life burgeoning forth.
Oh, uplift of Gaia’s body--
Mountain rock enduring through eons
As forests rise and fall and rise again,
To behold you brings abiding calm.
May we root into your stability
as we witness ongoing COVID causalities
rise and fall and rise again.
May we climb to your pinnacle of perspective
Exulting in expansive view, look out at
unbounded horizon
Look down at the valley below
As clouds billow and weather arises
As seasons flow by, vapor
round your steady stance.
May we borrow your deep-time endurance
And know your solid rock reliability
in these wearying times.