by Karen Kirsch

I remember when my children’s father, Mark, died. We had a big snow storm, unusual for the land around the Salish Sea. Everyone was staying home; the world had stopped. I was grateful that the usual demands had been dropped. It felt so right. I was stilling on the couch staring out at the snow and beauty of the trees and deep muffled quiet. Grief demands this of us, stop, be with what is, and feel. It is then, when we are most vulnerable, that it can be hard to set a boundary, to scream to the world it’s time to stop. And it’s when we need it most.

Grief revisits us again and again, months, years, even decades after the event. Grief barged into my life last week and with it, the tenderness, rawness, of Marks death washed over me as well. The sharp painful edges of grief get smoother over time. Like anything we pay close attention to, it changes; dissipates or expands, increases in clarity or ambiguity, or reveals what we initially couldn’t see.

Close up of Cedar bark.

When grief comes, if we can stop, sit and stare at the natural world, and feel all that is arising, we expand our capacity for life, for love. The lichen and the fern, the willow and the cedar, the moth and the coyote, the one who is dear and the stranger, they become equal in value. All priceless.

I am currently living with less stamina, less energy. More than a grief process, it is hitting me as an acceptance process. Yes, I grieve not going for walks yet I love that I can say without shame, I need to rest. But to accept that there is still value in what I do, though the volume is less, is harder some days. It doesn’t matter that I have fought the ideas of production, accumulation and nonstop doing as the valued currency, all of my life. They are in the air we breathe in American culture. I like to breathe the air closer to the trees; the air that has been cleansed of those contaminants. The air that will only nourish, replenish, and fill our bruised and battered lungs with oxygen.

Whether you are grieving a current loss or an old one. I wish you permission to slow down, to be in nature, be it a walk or a glance out the window where a junco flits from branch to branch and we stop to watch. We are nature; it is not separate from us. Except when we separate ourselves from it, with bulldozers or progress or just moving too fast.

As a movement teacher I’m not going to say the answer is to hold still. The grief you carry or the internal despair or agitation needs expression. You may need to let it physically toss you about. When I fling myself on the floor and roll in the intensity of feeling, it’s a natural medicine which wisely over takes me at times. The brisk walk on the trail, the pounding run, all know how to metabolize that which has been held back. Held in. And then the slow, attentive being with and your environment has room. Room to expand horizontally and downward. To erase the sharp line between you and nature. To let arise the feelings, or insights that need more time to reveal themselves. Slow permits us to live where time doesn’t.

We must find new ways to stay in relationship with those who have died. Slow allows space for the attention needed. Be it with the spiral dip of the hawk, the arrogant emergence of a tiny seedling, the scolding of a squirrel, a dragonfly who alights at our side, the insistent voice of rain, or whisper of wind. Nature is the conduit; you are the vessel.

“Slow and down are modes of the soul; they are connective modes, ways of keeping connected to oneself and to one’s environment. Slowing downwards; refers to more than simply moving slowly, it means growing down towards the roots of one’s being. Instead of outward growth and upward climb, life at times must turn inward and downward in order to grow in other ways. There is a shift to the vertical down that re-turns us to root memories, root metaphors, and timeless things that shape our lives from within. Slowing downwards creates opportunities to dwell more deeply in one’s life, for the home we are looking for in this world is within us all along. The lost home that we are seeking is ourselves; it is the story we carry within our soul.”

quote - Michael Meade

It’s almost impossible to walk in old growth forest without thinking of ancestors. The trees are so big and slow, quiet and old. I don’t know much about my ancestors, those in my family who preceded me. So, I imagine. I try to feel into who they were, what they did, how they lived. And as I walk among these old trees, I wonder, maybe they can tell me; they were alive back then. Maybe the underground mycorrhizal network of their roots spoke to other trees, who spoke to other trees, and could bring me the messages back from across the continent, across time. The ancient ones telling stories of time when they were young, and of my ancestors who lived near them.

There are more than very big trees here, there are strange trees too. When I moved to Pacific Northwest many years ago, I was so intrigued and excited by the nurse logs of the rainforests. The tree that has fallen becomes the ground for others to grow- not after it decays and becomes soil, but right away. Seeds land in the moist and mossy crevices of its bark. They germinate and begin to grow. Huckleberry, Red Cedar, Douglas Fir, Sitka Spruce, Hemlock, Maple, Salal, Fern and more.  They make their way with determination, anchoring roots in the bark and audaciously stretching tender green sprouts toward the light. 

And over time some of this multitude die and some thrive. The roots of some crawl down the sides of the log, reaching into the forest floor. And over even more time, the tree that fell- the nurse log- begins to rot away. When it has finally been used up by the bugs and plants, crumbled or carried off, the roots of the generation who grew upon it have formed arches, empty spaces, telling us the shape of the nurse log. 

I was awe struck when I first saw them, trees with arches for roots! Some even looked like they could pick up their mossy skirts and walk away. These root, leg, arches can be very odd and gnarled buttresses and others quite graceful and symmetrical. The air and light and creatures can pass right through. There was one in a nature preserve I used to visit. The trail went right through. I would stop and stand under it for a while; feeling the magic of standing under a live vertical tree. The last time I went on this hike it was gone. Fallen maybe to nurse others. It had been a long time and I wasn’t sure of its location; I didn’t find it. 

As a leader with Wild Grief I encourage people to take their grief into the wild world; to be with the cycles of growth and decay, of life and death, so evident in wild places. Over time, when grief no longer swamps us every time it arises, we begin to notice that grief sometimes creates fertile ground for reflection. I think we too grow on those who have fallen. I think there have been gifts and traumas passed on to me from my ancestors, as naturally as the fallen nurse log shapes the next generations of trees. 

Our ancestors, the ones who have passed, do they feed our souls, support our growth, and create the fertile ground from which we grow? I long to turn to them in times of need, like I turn to these wise old trees. I try to imagine how my ancestors might advise me, hold me, comfort me. Clearly, the generations before me, nursed and shaped me.  My form, my stature, is reflective of who they were- both the grace and the gnarlyness.

-Karen Kirsch, Wild Grief Founder, Board Member, and Guide

When I walk on the beach, in the woods, in a meadow or field, briskly letting my arms swing and my legs reach, that cross lateral action of my limbs moving engages my core muscles. This stimulus of these deep muscles brings me to the sensation of being in my center. But I am busy walking so may not be aware “I’m centered.” I might notice a feeling, a quality, that if I attended to it, I would say “ I feel like me, like I live in this body.” 

We can feel so disconnected in our busy lives: from ourselves, from humanity. When moving quickly (at least mentally moving quickly from one thing to the next), I’m playing the game of ‘beat the clock.’ How far can I get on this list, this project, this housekeeping, so I can do something else.

When I turn to the woods, the trails, the stream, I come closer to a yearning, a yearning to belong.

Sometimes I walk slowly, my energy is low and I absently take in what is around me. When I walk alone there is no pull to talk about the news, the world, my personal dramas. Yes, I do talk internally for some time, letting all of that run from synapse to synapse. After a while I begin to notice I feel different. I notice what is around me, really around me, beneath my feet, above and beside me; what my eyes reach to in front of me and the sounds that make me turn my head in stillness and attention. On Wild Grief walks we begin with that silent walking; to land on the earth, to be with self, to slow the inner chatter; before we walk and speak together. 

When I stop, listen, and feel into the space I have just moved through, I can curiously notice what has changed because of my presence. I can begin to feel that I am of the wild world, not just in it.

I, you, all creatures are nature; in the natural landscape we belong. 

When we are grieving, we can lose that sense of “I belong.”  The world seems strange: preoccupied with trivialities, indifferent to our pain. Our lives and our hearts have a gaping hole. When the one you love has left, your environment radically changes. How we belong, fit in, are a part of, is altered. It is new foreign territory to navigate; Who am I now? Where do I belong? 

The trees and plants, mushrooms and flowers all let me know I belong. The birds and mammals that I see evidence of (and occasionally see) go about their existence with me, they notice me. I fit here, as they do. When I belong to the natural world, I belong to myself. And without conscious awareness things shift and re-adjust inside me. Every living thing is now living without the physical presence of the one who died; every living thing is adapting, to a world without them. I will adapt as well. I am and it hurts. The trees will wait; they have patience. The short lived insects will remind us of the present moment with a touch to our skin. The plants will bloom and die, reminding us of the larger cycles. The bird song will be sad and will be joyful. it is all the same, vitality, life longing to live and belonging where it lives.

No I don’t come back from every walk enlightened, over it, or whatever I think should be. But I come back more myself, feeling my pain more acutely or feeling glimmers of joy  and hope or maybe feeling everything at the same time. Often it isn’t fully conscious but my deep being has been touched and I know I belong.

It’s not that I have been in nature, but I am nature.

So be longing. If you long for the one who has died, long in the woods, long next to rivers and streams, on the beach or the roadside. Nature keeps emerging everywhere and it is where you belong.

-Karen Kirsch, Wild Grief Board Member

Want support accessing and exploring this sense of belonging?

Check out Karen’s Recording of a Guided Belonging Grief Walk!

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Looking for support in how to deepen your connection with the natural world?

Check out our self-led Grief Walks & Virtual Hike Habits.