Once a week or so, I take a hike in the hills near my house. As the year winds along, the trail reveals its patterns: winter green turns to springtime flora to summer sere. This year, the hills have kept their bloom long past May and there are days, like yesterday, where it almost appears that some things are still growing madly out of nothing. How can the hills stay so green, long after the rains have stopped? What food do the starlings find to keep them a flight? Without soil, how on earth do roots live and thrive?
These are not miracles so much as the truth of our everyday ecosystem. I look for answers to my distress — will the current horrors ever end? Can the world take any more? What is my best work to relieve the suffering all around me? — and recognize the parallels on the trail. If a plant can do this, there is always an answer, always a way forward.
Let’s all commit to finding our path, a way to make something out of what truly, these days, feels like nothing.
Vicki Forman 