Bury My Heart Beneath the Rainy Wounded Forest

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.