“Place your hands in the soil to feel grounded. Wade in water to feel emotionally healed. Fill your lungs with fresh air to feel mentally clear. Raise your face to the heat of the sun and connect to that power to feel your own immense power.” ~Victoria Erickson
I have written before about my love of nature, but how can I not feel so much love for something so beautiful and healing!
Last week we just got back from Whistler. We go there quite often since we live only a couple of hours away, but it’s usually just for the day. This time we went for a whole week. That is all I wanted for my birthday…to immerse myself in nature, together with my family, for an entire week! We did a lot of exploring, hiking, climbing, swimming, and even playing in the snow, we had picnics by the lake as the sun was setting…and of course, there were moments of doing absolutely nothing.
I like to go off the beaten path usually. I really love to be surrounded by the wild…and the raw. It’s where my soul feels completely free! As John Muir said: “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” There is such a profound message when you are in nature: everything is perfect exactly as it is.
The first few days it was cold….about 3 degrees Celcius for the high. We hiked through forests COVERED in lichen, protected from the half rain/half snow. It was beautiful! The air was so clean and fresh and crisp and it was so quiet. We came across beautiful lakes, and we just sat there and enjoyed the silence. Here, on top of these mountains, life felt so peaceful and calm…completely oblivious of what is going on back down there in the cities…all the traffic, the noise, the hustle and bustle of every day, the chaos… We had left it behind for now…like we found the pause button and here time stood still ♥ I felt so free and timeless. There was no sense of hurry here, no noise…a place where you could just be.
One of the forests we hiked through looked like it had burned down in the past. The bark of the trees was completely charred, but some trees were still standing. Among them, new plants were now growing, where the old trees that didn’t survive the fire were once standing. What a beautiful reminder of how life keeps going…even after destruction and devastation, there is new life that grows. There were so many beautiful flowers in this forest, purple, white, yellow, even wild roses, and the most beautiful soft pink and lavender-tinted grass, which I had never seen before! ♥ …hard to believe that not long ago, this very place was all in flames, and was now bursting with life again! Life keeps going…
As the days got warmer, we took the gondola up the mountain where there was still lots of snow, and had snowball fights with our girls. It’s so much fun to just let go and be a child again!
We also hiked to see the train wreck. It was a nice hike through the forest, along the river, past a waterfall and some really amazing scenery. I think you can get there by taking the train tracks, but what would be the fun in that? Plus you would miss the river, the canyon, the waterfall… This train wreck is pretty wild! Parts are even hanging off the cliff. Apparently it derailed and crashed through the forest many years ago. It was too expensive to clean up, so it was left here. People have now turned it into a place to do bike stunts and Whistler made the area ‘graffiti approved’.
On the last day, we hiked to Rainbow falls. It’s a really fun hike, quite steep but absolutely worth the adventure. The water was so clean and the air was so fresh! We just sat on rocks and let the mist from the waterfall cool us down from the steep hike we just did. It was rejuvenating!
There is just so much to explore and so much to learn out there, on this wonderful planet! No matter how chaotic life may seem, nature, to me, is the place that feels most healing…it’s that comforting feeling of coming home, where you can be exactly who you are, wild and raw, and that is perfectly ok. Everything will be ok. Life goes on…