“Miracle: 1.) an event or action that apparently contradicts known scientific laws and is hence thought to be due to supernatural causes, esp. to an act of God  2.) a remarkable event or thing; marvel 3.) a wonderful example” --- Webster’s New World Dictionary 

May 27, 2006:  We are close to the summit of Pine Mountain, near Frazier Park, CA.  I have brought the men’s group I facilitate for a weekend retreat.  Our group has been building up to this weekend, exploring our relationship with nature on night hikes.  We’re practicing dropping labels, names, ideas, and human language, so that we might heighten our experience of the wilderness. 

During an exercise in which we each go off by ourselves, I discover a small meadow in the midst of the pine forest.  Dandelions provide scattered splotches of yellow against the brilliant green.  A trickle of a stream bisects this rare patch of grass.  On either bank of the stream, the ground is very wet.  Most likely there was snow there a few weeks ago.  It’s cold for this time of year.  The temperature on this sunny afternoon is in the thirties.

I sit on the soft grass a short distance from the stream.  The cool wind carries the smell of pine sap to my nostrils.  I savor that smell, one of my favorites.  I sense an invitation to stretch out on this lush carpet of greenery, and I accept, allowing the sun to warm me as I lay out along the grass.  My eyes wander to a small pine sapling that is poking upward a few yards to my right.  It seems to be greeting me.  I regard it intently, erasing its “label” from my awareness.  What a unique, beautiful wending upward its little trunk exhibits!  Its tiny branches emit an energy full of hopefulness and optimism, like a happy toddler.  It seems to be touching the sky, like I encouraged my daughters to do when they were little.  I’m filled with warm feelings as my awareness of it moves toward relationship.

My attention rises to the trunks of the mature pines beyond the edge of the meadow.  These sturdy beings bear a magnificent presence that speaks of endurance, continuity, and awesome strength.  Looking beyond the few closest to me, I discern an open pathway through an entire grove of trees.  As I look deeper into this forest, my eyes take me into a tunnel dappled with white sunlight and a tangle of branches emitting yellows, bright greens, dark greens, greens of many shades, and patches of brown and black, branches and shadow.

I enter into this tunnel through my gaze. I am aware that, though my physical body is still lying in the meadow, I am entering deeply into this grove of trees, off the ground.  I am at once stretched out on the grass and moving ever deeper into that tunnel, as though floating, or flying among the branches.  I offer them the gift of carbon dioxide; they reciprocate with oxygen.  Their needles reach out to me, and we engage in a beautiful dance, my soul kissing and caressing the many-fingered boughs.  Our spirits blend together until they are no longer “pine branches” and I am no longer “me.”  We merge into a mystery that is much more than our supposedly separate beings seemed a few moments ago.  I feel a fullness in my chest, a fullness of satisfaction.  Tears well up in my eyes.  I am so blessed.  Such a gift, given so freely and with such generosity.

All of this happens during a few squawks of a scrub jay.  Then my awareness withdraws from the tunnel and “returns” to “my body.”  “I” am not the same.  I am forever changed.  I now carry in my body this gift, this mystery, the merging of my being with those of the pine trees.  I carry in my soul the ecstasy of our dance.  I carry in my heart that fullness that made me weep.  This deep entering into my surroundings leaves me with the certain knowledge that there is no real separation between myself and the trees, plants, and animals.  I am loved and supported by them.  I love and support them.  We may dance together in this eternity of loving, even if I am on a freeway stuck in traffic.

Now I wonder, was this experience a miracle?  We have been taught to think that miracles happen only occasionally to unusual people or in extraordinary situations, that a miracle won’t happen in our lives, or that miracles never happen.  I choose to believe that miracles are happening constantly, but it is our awareness of them, not the occurrence, that is rare.  We may experience miracles by opening ourselves to them, allowing them into our lives, and realizing that it is our perception that governs whether we experience them or not.  Perhaps this is what we often miss in our lives, a partaking in the daily miracles occurring all around us and especially when we access our relationship with nature.