Breath as Prayer

I’m hiking up Junction Creek in Durango, Colorado. Bailey the Wonder Dog walks beside me, my best friend with four legs with whom I am pleased to share this afternoon. A most perfect companion on a day I wish to spend in peaceful silence. We walk. The trail is narrow and fringed purple with blooming alfalfa that smells like honey. Pine trees form a mottled canopy that blocks the summer sun. A ubiquitous hum of cicadas on the breeze complements the white noise perfection of Junction Creek as it rushes along. It is a perfect day. Friendly mountain bikers and hikers cross our path from time to time, but for the most part the trail and the creek are ours.

Our cruising pace is best described as an amble. In no hurry, noticing every detail of the landscape. Soaking it in with a naturalist eye, small details come into focus and the woodland world matrix envelopes us. I begin to converse with the woods and chatter to the creek via internal dialogue with myself. A sense of gratitude fills my every breath and I am deliberate and conscious with each inhale and exhale. Breathe in a delicious oxygenic prayer directly expelled from the soil, herbs, shrubbery and trees. Breathe out a carbon monoxide offering of alms to the saintly blue spruce minarets lining my pilgrimage. Quite pleased with my life I offer thanks to the spirit of its genesis. I am greeted with a cool breeze upon my face. Smiling with love for the diverse wonders of life on this planet I offer thanks to the spirit of creation. I am gifted with a cavalcade of yellow swallowtail butterflies lighting overhead. Seated by the creek, feet emerged in snow melt coolness I close my eyes and think of my beloved family and friends, offering thanks for their lives. I am visited by the whirring curiosity of a hummingbird. I was once told that hummingbirds represent the dancing joy of God. I close my eyes and laughter wells up inside my heart.  I am present to the divine workings of the natural world, large and small, inside and outside. Magic. Thunder sounds in the distance.The raucous boom grows closer and my pulse quicken. Indigenous peoples of North America believe that the Great Spirit dwells in the clouds. The Thunder Gods. I hear their booming voices, drawing closer. They seek me. Raindrops begin to fall, fat like tadpoles. Here and there they glitter upon leaves and my bare skin until more and more unite to form a sheet of cool, cleansing sky water. Let go they coax. Let go. The water beads upon my shoulders and runs down the contour of my chest forming rivers of goodbye. Goodbye to hidden sadness, doubt, worry, guilt, anger. Goodbye to all that is not love. Rain soaks my clothes, into my skin, pooling with my blood, percolating through bone and diluting my cells. I let go and tears slide down my cheek, salty rain from the cumulous clouds of my mind and heart. I am one with all and I smile through the tears and through the rain. Bailey walks silently beside me as the rain thins to mist and we near the end of the trail.