Ceremony of Return
By: Catherine Jackson
Yellowstone National Park, Montana, 2008
As a child, I spent a lot of time outside. My family camped often with tents pitched on soft earth, smoke curling from fire pits, laughter echoing into star-stained skies. In those moments, the world felt full and wide, like there was space for all of us to simply be. The kind of space that doesn’t ask questions, but still answers something deep.
In fourth grade, I went on a school trip to OPI. My mother was my teacher then, and her presence made the trees feel taller, the air lighter. I remember hiking, the sun on my shoulders, the wind brushing against my face like a secret. I walked and walked with classmates until the sounds of the trail fell away and all I could hear was the rhythm of my own breath matching the rhythm of the earth.
There was lichen on the trees. Delicate, pale green, like the forest was wearing lace. Our counselor told us we could eat it, and I did. It tasted like bark and rain and time. To eat something that grew from the trees felt like a ceremony. A way of saying: I am not separate from this. I am of it.
Somewhere in the beautiful PNW, 2014
I didn't know it then, but the forest was already beginning to teach me how to heal. I return to it now, as an adult, more deliberately. Not just to remember who I was, but to meet who I am becoming. When the world is too loud, I seek out stillness in water, in wind, in birdsong. I listen for the parts of me that only speak when I am quiet.
Nature holds a kind of truth we don’t always recognize until we are undone enough to need it. It teaches without words. It shows us how to rest, how to grow, how to let go. Look at the trees that shed their leaves without shame. Look at the rivers that change course without apology.
Look at the moss that grows only where the light and moisture meet in balance. There is something holy in that. Something deeply human. We live in a time where urgency is everywhere. Where worth is measured in output and noise. But the earth moves in seasons. She does not rush her bloom. She does not panic in her stillness. She reminds me that slowness is not failure. That returning is not regression. That healing does not have to look like progress to be real.
When I walk in the woods, I feel the younger version of myself walking beside me. The one who ate lichen and thought the trees were magic. She reminds me to stay curious. To let joy be simple. To pay attention to what the world is whispering.
We were never meant to do this life alone. Nature reminds me of interconnection, of how everything feeds everything else. The fire that warms us was once wood, once tree, once seed. The water that soothes us has touched sky and mountain and cloud. What a gift, to belong to something that ancient. What a relief, to not be the center of the story.