The forest is death. We think of winter as the time of death. It seems obvious. after the leaves have turned and fallen. When the sap slows and the greenery dies back to bare ground. And snow blankets all as the forest sleeps. But that is dormancy. The forest is merely sleeping.
But now, this summer day, when it is teeming with animal sounds, smells of humus, when you feel the humid emanation of plant matter. There is death. The soil is composting. Moss and seedlings sprout from the dead. The trees. The decaying leaf litter. The animals feeding on the living plants, and each other and on them when they die the mycelium and bacteria consume and compost. The forest floor is a foundation of death. It waits for the return.
When we engaged in our maranasati meditation and imagined our bones turned to soil. When we spoke of the importance of a green burial allowing no space between us and the wanting earth, do we know our bodies ache to return? Are we honoring our life as the inhale waiting for the exhale. The letting go of the breath to return home?
If we stand in one place in a forest long enough we will be consumed by the life around us. Ironically the more life, the quicker the consumption. Standing in the rainforest it could be an hour or a day but the ants, the small mammals, a quick predator, a strangling vine. It’s a conveyor belt of consumption. The arctic circle a slow freeze maybe. Slowing your decomposition until spring thaw warms the soil and the digestion begins anew. The more life. The more death.
Perhaps when we experience the joy of the living world. The chattering black squirrels, beds of moss, cache of morels, the evening mourning doves. we can also feel ourselves released back into the mother’s arms and down into her womb to be born again.