From where is it that the all pervasive presence that I sense whenever I am surrounded by nature emanates? Is it from the cerulean sky that is as endless as it is blue?

Or is it from the verdant earth upon whose heart I recline in order that I may benefit from its healing energy? Perhaps it is the wind that untangles itself from the branches of the old cottonwood where it slept the night away murmuring in its sleep who conveys that sense of a mysterious unseen presence. All day it is that harlequin wind that skips across these gentle hills and goes singing all down this wide valley stopping to ruffle the waters of the glacial lake along whose shore this old town has grown up.

Out here where I am embraced by the natural world I never feel alone. It is only in a crowd of strangers that a sense of isolation can catch us off guard. But here in that all encompassing embrace of land, sky and water there is rather a sense of kinship, or belonging of being one with the first light of day and with all living beings who are a part of the web of life itself. It is that sense of relationship, of being part of something far greater than ourselves that prompts the first peoples of this land to pray a prayer of inclusiveness for “all our relations”. We understand that everything that is part of the web of life is related and interconnected to every other part.

Perhaps that mysterious sense of presence I experience when I open myself to the whole of creation is indeed the combined respirations of all that composes the sacred web and a manifestation of its very consciousness.