You take a step forward, a small one in darkness and emptiness. And then another one. You listen and watch but neither sound nor vision comes to your senses. You feel blinded but safe. You go more small steps and slowly, the world simmers grey instead of nothing. You see some path beneath your feet, just a shadow of that. Your feet start making soft, calm sounds on whatever is beneath your feet, you can’t tell. To the right and to the left there’s nothing but greyness, no limits you can see, a vast unexplored space in a world. Your steps become louder as you continue and you perceive the dripping of water from somewhere. The air around you feels warm but not hot and dry, pretty comfortable. The worlds lights up more and more and finally you can make out the ground beneath and around you more clearly. It looks like stone, even but natural, here and there are small cracks, too small to make you stumble. The stone stretches around you as far as you can see.
Though on the right there is something blue, whatever it is, it’s the first shade of color you see since you’ve started your journey. You feel drawn to this and first you can hear and then can see that it’s a small stream, running it’s course through a bed of stone. It’s a very pure combination of stone and water. The water is perfectly clear and still simmering blue, either reflecting something out of your view or even simmering on its own. You look up to see the sky, see if it’s blue but there’s nothing above you, just dim greyness and nothingness, hiding whatever might be there from your view.
You follow along with the river, watching it becoming broader and broader, towards a diffuse source of lightness. The stream is going to lead you to something important, you sense that. Its water will be part of what is bringing life into this world. The stone beneath your feet loosen up, turning more into cobble, also producing a different sound as you walk. From time to time you start seeing blades of grass between the cobbles, hinting first sights the life in this world. These sights become more and more often, gradually transforming the stone waste into a green grass landscape, still flat but covered with waves of flowing and swinging grass. You sense the wind that moves the grass on your skin, a soft touch. It brings along flies and butterflies, creating spots of brown, red and orange in the still rather greyish air and the green grass. They also buzz around you but don’t seem to take notice of you.
You take a deep breath and sense a freshness in air as if the air before had been a bit stale without you noticing it back then. The path you’re still walking on is nearly invisible and seems to form rather at your own will than being preset. The choice where you go is yours. Taking a pause to stand and look all around you, you become aware of the expansiveness and the possibilities in this landscape. You turn around once more and then set of into a new direction.
Slowly the grass around you transforms. Some parts grow higher than before, others seems to fade and turn into yellow and brown. Often it rustles somewhere within the grassy landscape but you hardly catch a sight of the causes. Sometimes a small brown moving thing here and a black one over there. The sky above you gets clearer and brighter, turning more into shades of blue. Or is it even blue? You glance upwards once more and the sky appears rather grey again, but with more defined forms of the clouds. Something wet touches your skin, starting to feel like rain. It’s a bit cold but not unbearable.
More and more rain pours down from above, darkening the sky and making the air more moist. You look around, trying to find a shelter but there’s still just grass around you. You kneel down, trying to be as small as you can, to protect yourself from the rain but still you sense the drops on your back, not getting calmer. Glancing around you the sky shows nothing but darkness and raindrops falling. You set out again, deciding not be stopped by a rain you can’t hide from. The path before you becomes more floating, less clear, but also giving you more chances to avoid puddles if you want to.
You continue to walk through the rain, it feels endless, sometimes annoying, sometimes refreshing. But the landscape around you transforms. The rain gives birth to new grass and even small bushes, in a bright green you haven’t seen before. The waves in the landscape become clearer and steeper, rather being hills in the end. Slowly animals start showing up around you. First small ones, butterflies that struggle flying through the rain, trying to evade all the drops, small birds sending out cries to each other, connecting with each other despite the rain. All add a new shade of color into the world which had turned more greyish as the rain continued. The plants around you grow and so do the animals, they evolve alongside each other, profiting from the changes of each other. Sometimes animals approach you, showing no sign of fear, being curious of the one who walks through the rain through their space. They all seems to notch you towards new directions, opening new paths when they disappear again, leaving more room for you to explore.
You lose yourself in the rhythm of new and old animals coming forth and showing you new ways, it’s interesting and sparks your curiosity. Each animal is different, in their colors, their behaviors, their sounds, how they approach you. Everyone is unique and leaves their own unique imprint on you as it interacts with you. You starting waking up from this as fewer animals start to appear and less new paths open up. But the path ahead of you seems clearer than it has ever been. Also, the rain has stopped, you didn’t realize it becoming fainter but now it’s gone though you can still sense the moisture in the air and see the life it has brought to the nature around you.
You walk ahead still being surrounded by tall plants and trees, reaching high into the sky, with clean and bright colors, all shades of green and colorful blossoms in red, yellow, blue, orange, pink. It’s filling you with renewed energy and certainty about the path you’re on. You have this feeling of expansion, now being more able to give back to the nature around you, perhaps helping animals as they cross your way. Yet, the nature around you doesn’t need a lot of help, it seems to be in balance on its own, rather helping you to thrive by making your path clear and uncovered from plants. You look at this wonder in more detail and gain appreciation for the prefect and imperfect parts you perceive: leaves and blossoms that just ideally point towards the light, giant leaves offering shelter to small animals underneath, blossoms that have all shades of colors and various shapes but still all beautiful to watch.
Sometimes animals come forward, gently, curiously, some even allow you to touch them, soothing the warm fur of them or the fluffy feathers of birds. Others will just appear and disappear into a different direction, offering a new path as they leave your sight but none of those temps you to leave your path.
You still wander through the hills, as they become more steep over time, forcing you to take more care of your steps but yet leading you to even more breath-taking outlooks and plants along your way. They are not necessarily growing bigger but rather more refined and more beautiful. The rain hasn’t reached this part, so you step over soft green gras and sometimes harsher rocks as your path leads you upward. The sky above you is bright blue, a sun glaring down, making it comfortably warm but not hot. Shining through the leaves of the plants it casts amazing, complex patterns of shadow and dancing light onto the floor around you.
At one point you cross a small creek running down from even higher. It carries a few fish, orange, red and brown sprinkles in the water and they swim downwards with the current. The water is clean and fresh but also cold. Nonetheless it gives you a new boost of energy to take on those hills, or perhaps rather mountains. For quite a while now you have always been walking upward as opposed to before where you would rather go up and down repeatedly. Especially after you crossed the creek, plants are getting smaller, seemingly struggling more to sustain on the ground than before.
You reach a plateau and while the path continues upwards, you allow yourself a break and turn around to see where you came from. But nothing could have prepared you for that view. You are now up much higher than you expected and have a great view over the landscape you’ve wandered through before. Beneath there is a splendid area of mixed forest, bright and green shining up towards you, stretching far to every side. In the distance you can depict what might be the rain you’ve walked through before and the plants are smaller closer to the horizon. The clouds are quite impressive even at a distance and rain still seems to pour down. And just at the horizon, you are barely able to make out shapes, stands something that might be some other mountains. The landscape stretches far to both sides, farther than you imagined. To the right you can see the mountains you’re currently standing on merging with those that you might have seen behind the rainy clouds. To the left you catch sprinkles and glitter of blue and white and yellow. At first glance it looks similar to the sky above you but as you look closer you see that it is rather a giant surface of water and sand that you’re looking at. You stand there in amazement and appreciation, looking back on the way you came, taking in this whole view, making a snapshot of it and storing it to your memory to never forget it again.
As you still look out, perceiving more and more details as you continue to watch the landscape beneath you, picking out some animals or some particularly outstanding plants, you suddenly sense a weight on your one shoulder and you startle. You turn around, trying to see what happen and you have a beautiful bird sitting on your shoulder. It shows no sign of fear, just sitting there, seemingly familiar with you. Sometimes it glances at you, sometimes just looking out on the landscape. You gently touching, feeling the softness of its feathers and the warmth of its body. It doesn’t mind being caressed, even seems to enjoy it. Slowly it starts getting a bit shifty, restless, starts pulling at your hair – which might hurt a bit – and then sets off towards the unknown part of the path. You look back one last time and decide to follow it, towards whatever might be still ahead of you. The path is still leading upward and every time you glance around, the bird is within your sight, a constant presence at your side, taking the journey together.
~ 13.8.2021