(This article was originally posted on The Voice Nook on Substack.)

My home and garden are tucked next to a patch of woodlands.

Living at the edge of the forest teaches you how to exist within systems of unending change, constant chaos, and magnificent complexity.

It is humbling and frustrating and grounding and nourishing all at once.

Sometimes it feels oppositional – especially in the spring, when all the plants and animals wake up at the same time and try to make your house their house.

But when you start to pay attention, you realize you’re actually on the same side.

Well…actually, there are no sides.

There’s just the All Of It.

You start to listen. You watch. You immerse yourself in the sensing of it.

You start asking, over and over again:

“What do you need from me in order to thrive?”
“Where can I pitch in more?”
“In what ways do I need to back off a bit?”
“How can I improve the conditions around you?”

And my favorite:

“What would you like to teach me?”

If you pay attention, you begin to learn the stories, histories, and rhythms of all the life that came before you – and will remain long after you are gone.

And for a brief moment, you get to be here together.

You realize you’re just as much a part of the All Of It as everything else is, ever was, or ever will be.

And that’s when you begin to understand that you can communicate and collaborate with everything around you.

Not to control it or to tame it. And not to surrender yourself to it either. Just to participate in it more consciously.

And it starts to meet you with the same attention you give to it.

Sometimes through beauty.
Sometimes through inconvenience.
Sometimes through loss and grief.

Almost never in the ways you expect it to.

And somehow, I still think that’s beautiful.

(This is not a post about gardening.)