Dispatches/2 Bury My Heart Beneath the Rainy Wounded Forest
…..michael a. bengwayan
There’s
something about the rainy season nowadays. This year it arrived early, like a
visitor who wishes to help with the meal rather than wait to be
served.
It comes teasing
us with afternoon rains on warm blustery days. Then easing us out with
mild cool breeze on evenings.
This year is different, at least here in the
northern part of the Philippines. We’ve had a short summer. Several really hot days, but mostly warm. And
then last week: a thunderstorm. Torrential rains. it is tempestuous in some places: flooding.
But what
lies beneath is where the whole story happens.
What happens
when warm days turn wet and sickening
wet rainy season? It soaks the trees, and then warmer temperatures nudge a
flowing life beneath the surface.
What happens
to us under those circumstances? We start dreaming. We make plans. We say, “Not
yet!” while dreaming of “It’s time!” We let the ideas and thoughts and
interests that survive just below our surface take shape. Rainy days make space
for thoughts often pushed out of the way by sunshine and blue skies. Rain puts
everything in perspective, if only for a little while. Rain finds time.
At my forest
farm Habitat,( a five hectare expanse of pine trees, alder, narra, black
wattle, calliandra, coffee, etc) and it takes so much time to deal with rainy
season. Rain is gray and quiet, lonely and sleeping. Rain means long naps beside
the fire to keep the darkness away. Rain has the power to drain our enthusiasm.
It can steal our joy if we don’t find ways to embrace its gifts.
During rainy
seasons when my left leg was not killing me then, I plan my gardens. I clean the house, read books, write miles of
prose and drink kettles of coffee right
from my orchard.
Every evening,
I cozy up to a blazing fire. Learn.
Study. At the middle of the night, I would
go out and breathe the sharp, crisp air from the trees and stretch my lungs.
An early
riser, I would always find something to do besides work and more work and
obligations and duty. I try to be
creative. Be inquisitive. Be patient. Be kind. I stop and listen to the sounds of the rain, the wind. I can always hear them
calling. … the silence of the woods.
The trees
know rainy days is a time for quiet, for rest. The birds in refuge at my attic,
sense it, too.
A prolonged
rainy season can be lonely. You can feel some dead feeling of it, feel the bone
structure of the landscape.
But our
whole story never shows … but it’s there, isn’t it? Living, breathing, growing,
stretching just below the surface. Waiting for a warm day when sparkling sun
gets the ideas and enthusiasm flowing for our good.
Indeed. Because nothing illustrates the point
quite like a mighty dry pine tree. Stoic and silent in the rainy landscape but
oh, the possibilities flowing inside.
What’s below
the surface of a rainy season? What’s
thriving beneath the wet exterior that waits for the heat and light of day? Rainy
season is for examining the whole story, our story … the hidden dreams … the
quiet goals.
Of burying
the past, and living the new.
