Succession

[Succession :: Kinnikinnick Ring :: sterling silver & chalcedony :: for the burned heart that is regenerating]

I like to visit the burned forests.
The trees stand on end
backcombed by righteous flame
twisted and crumpled by furious fists of lightning
rows upon rows of black poles issuing silent screams.

The quiet is stacked in every direction
like dominoes.
I step on a twig and the world around me flickers
waggles
and collapses under the strain of sound waves.
A robin sings and I am startled.
Echos run for miles in
thick
unobstructed pulses.
It is surreal.

I like the burned forests.
I like the unburned forests, too, but for different reasons.
Both are tremendously alive, even though a burned area can seem just the opposite.
A forest fire brings renewal, eliminates blights, frees conifers to grow the next generations of forests because with the heat, comes release and a flood of nutrients: As I walk, I think I hear the earth hum.

Renewal and regrowth come in successionary tiers,
building, quite literally, in new and greater heights as a forest establishes itself
again after ruin and plight.
The first thing to grow abundant and rich grows at ground level.
The sweet carpets of the forest floor that dig in, with relish, root tip by root tip, and bring the first stability to a wilderness area made fecund by fire: mosses, grasses, kinnikinnick, mushrooms, wildflowers, rose, alder, willow…and so on and so forth until the fir and pine tower once more.

Up from the ashes
come green on green on green.

When I look at a burned forest I see so much promise and hope and probably a metaphor for the human heart which is also such a delicately magnificent thing of strength and beauty. A thing capable of so much growth and regeneration, even after the fiercest burning flames. If a forest can do it, rise up from heartbreak and pain, I can too. And so I do.

Begin small, like the forest, and go from there.

[Succession :: In The Soil Unseen Necklace :: sterling silver & pearl]