Sanctuary

There’s a place I know, deep into the farthest edge of the preservation centre where the woods meet the prairie meet the water. There I feel so surrounded with the elements: the wind across the long grasses, the babble and occasional splash from the creek mixed with the branches (bare in the winter, like skeletal hands and claws – full, over flowing with life in the summer, their leaves moving like so many whispering voices) and the wind running its fingers through the struggling forest growth.

I could, by all means, sit there in a flattened bit of grass near the tiny, and almost
useless, red bridge with no railing and no name, but instead I choose to stand, to try and reach (if only with my eyes) to the rolling, ever-changing heavens. Days before summer storms are the best; the air (already so alive) is electrified with the clashing currents and intensified tenfold by gathering power that you don’t have to try to feel, it is so strong. When I stand there amidst it all I can melt away into the place, a little portion of my soul is allowed to fly with those elements for a little while.

But being there is only half the fun – getting there is a brilliant adventure. First I’ve got to travel from my home back in time to the old part of the land; past the trees that once stood there, the ones that shout upward in a subtle and confidant way, into those calm and wise paths with their oak-guards sprouting magnificently throughout. Down a steep hill I go, to what seems a dead-end.

Hah. It is anything but.

A little crumb of Nature we once held sits on the gigantic platter that is this earth and it
is to there that I go. Once the violently red barn and bird enclosures are passed, I am free to walk, to wander as far as my feet allow – or until I meet the vicious roadway that borders this mini sanctuary.

The truth of the matter, I must now confess, is that every time I come to that place it seems a little…smaller. More…confined than the last time I did visit.

It could be that I am growing older or that I am more aware of the surroundings outside the small, sheltered sanctuary. Or it could be that, inch by inch, it is disappearing. Stolen away, eaten by the unforgiving tires on the asphalt, devoured by the poison in the air, chewed at the edges by all the things we forget not to do – that we have forgotten not to do. And yet, this did not begin yesterday, but years back when the oak-guarded houses were built; then they worried about Nature’s connection fading.

Ah, the problems we are faced with still…