Alive embodied presence

The other day, in Grasslands National Park, I was walking along a marked trail when I stopped to make out a dark movement coming over the hill in the distance. I held still, wondering if it might be a deer, or perhaps a bison. But no, it was the first human I had seen all day.

Something about the figure’s movement struck me as strange: a ramrod-straight body, striding at a gait and pace that seemed oddly out of step with its surroundings. It brought to mind the way a satellite looks, crossing the night sky- a linear, mechanical interloper, incongruent and disconnected from the vast, living presence around it.

The contrast was sharp. On this day so far I’d encountered only bison and deer, so attuned and present, their ‘beingness’ contiguous with the land itself.

This is why I moved here, I thought. This is why I’ve practiced meditation all these years. To feel directly my permeability and connection with the environment I inhabit. To be brought back into the vitality of connection to the whole. To the direct perception of it through my animal body- beyond the narrow interpreted world of the conceptual mind. I’m here following a longing to return to my true nature, as part of nature. To step back into the aliveness of embodied presence and remember my place in the family of things. I’m here to come back to life.