Teaching of Earth’s reclamation

Where we live, in the interior mountains of BC, the land is a spectacle. You can’t go anywhere without having your breath taken away by great stretches of beauty or grand displays of Creation that literally lift you up and away from the restrictions of your life. Right behind our house is a long, steady slope that leads to a peak a few miles back and from our deck we look out over a pristine lake clenched in the tight vee of another pair of mountains. When the sun shines just right on a clear, windless day the mirror of that lake makes it feel as though there were two skies.
To say that we love it here is redundant. To say that the land inspires, fills and anchors us to this place is too great a simplification. We have come to understand that we are connected to it as surely as we are to each other. We exist in relationship with her. Stepping out and standing in the hushed quiet of a spring evening is to allow yourself to feel the depth of that relationship and be quietly thankful for it. This land, this Canada, is magnificent.
Hiking is one of our great joys. There’s nothing better in the non-snow seasons than heading out on a trail that leads you to some other breathtaking, awesome, spectacular place. It’s always worth the effort of the climb. It’s worth the work it sometimes takes because the reward is the reconnection to the planet. Each careful planting of the foot leads you closer to the essential nature of our relationship to Earth and her countless blessings and motivations. We feel empowered, assured and contented when we hike and we do it often.
It costs nothing except the gas it requires to drive there. We always pack a good lunch with our favorite treats, lots of water, extra sweaters and a dangling bell on the back pack to warn bears of our approach. There’s an excitement that builds as we get closer to our destination especially those places we’ve never hiked before and there are always new places to explore.
Recently we hiked up Embleton Mountain. It’s on the road that leads to our favorite ski hill and we passed the trail head many times intending to hike it one day. It took a year or two but finally we did it. The trail leads to a lookout that lets you see for miles. The climb up was tough. The trail was thin, rocky and steep and it took all we had to press our way to the top. But when we crested the summit and stood at the top we felt energized instead of tired. It was what we saw around us that created that feeling.
See, the mountain pine beetle devastated this area of the BC Interior over the course of the last five or six years. Thousands and thousands of hectares of pine were killed.
There are the skeletal remains of once proud trees standing stark and ruined everywhere you look. It hurt us incredibly to witness the destruction of great forests. But the beetles moved on and left devastation in their wake and we could see it on that long upward climb.
But there, at the top of that mountain was a meadow. Fallen trees were strewn everywhere but grasses and plants flourished among them. There was a lush green strewn with flashes of color, the mosses were thick and fungal smelling – and there were pines. Everywhere across that meadow were hundreds of new growth pine trees. Some were two or three years old, others just emerging. But there were hundred and hundreds of them and looking at them reaching upward toward the sky was the incarnation of hope itself.
It was heartening to see. Among the evidence of the great kill of a few years back was the evidence of life reclaiming itself. There was the power of nature on display. There was Creation offering us a glimpse into the very nature of its process – continuation, life, the great, grand circle of it. There, in that meadow, was a great teaching – that we only truly lose what we cease to believe in.
As we continued we began to see even more saplings. Not only pine but spruce and fir as well. The fallen trees would lend their bodies back to the earth and the new trees would be nourished by them and grow strong and sturdy again. That’s harmony, that’s life expressing its truest nature and we were awed by it.
Sometimes we wonder at the turns of nature. Sometimes we wonder why things happen. But the Earth takes care of itself always. It always reclaims itself as long as we stand back and leave it alone. In that is the teaching.