Sensing in the Forest

There are 25 of us this sunny Saturday Spring Equinox morning. We’re here to experience the woods through our senses with Larry Rohan, Whidbey Institute’s (WI) Forest Steward.

Gathering us for an introductory circle, Larry explains how he came to the WI. In a (tiny) nutshell, Larry explains that he started to take long walks in nature during COVID and began to understand the forest not as a separate entity, but rather as part of him, and he of it. His daily, short meditation forest experiences led to a long, deep and abiding gratitude with a desire to be in the forest as much as he could and to be of service, to learn and to share his learnings with groups of people like the ones gathered here today. 

Larry explains that this morning we will begin to see and understand the forest through our bodily senses. He begins with the first human function: breath. 

“The breath is where I ground to nature, and it's something that you can do very quickly. I’ll usually look at a tree or it could be a plant, it could be moss. And with a spirit of gratitude, I say thank you for your gifts. And I take another breath. And that breath is thank you for your gifts. And that gift is oxygen. These trees produce a lot of oxygen. A lot of oxygen is made by the phytoplankton in the ocean all throughout the forest. Everything that's green produces oxygen in making food for itself. So in that spirit of connectedness to the world, I feel grateful and paying attention to the breath and noticing how a deep breath really can relax you. So as we walk to the listening circle, I would like to suggest that everybody pay attention to their breath.”

And so we head towards the listening circle, into the woods, and into our sensory explorations.

Larry: “We're going to start with the sense of smell. And we’ll combine smell with taste because they're so close together. So what that could look like is you could get down to your knees and smell the earth. You can hug a tree. You can smell bark. Find a furrow in a tree and see what that's like. You could go find some fern fronds or some of this evergreen huckleberry and break off a couple leaves and crush them. Smell. We are so often just reliant on our eyesight in our built environments. We often don't need to pay attention to our senses. So this is a way to get in touch with the earth on an intimate level and engage those senses.”

We disperse into our own personal forest smell and taste experiences.

After several  minutes, we gather again around the forest stone circle and share our experiences out loud.

“Hemlock tastes the best.”

“Dirt and moss smell good.”

“When I was holding a tree, I felt that I could feel the root, the heart of the tree, down into the root. I wondered how it smelled.”

“I smiled seeing all these beautiful humans walking in the forest.”

 “I often don't notice that the rest of the natural world is responding to me,” says Larry. “It's always me doing something to it. And what's way more accurate, I would say, is to know that this is all an interaction and we're woven into this tapestry of existence.”

More voices from the circle follow. 

“It felt really good to get on my knees and put my face in the moss and then rest on top of a log. To feel how the log could support me. It was so wonderful to feel 100% supported. And then I had this image because I'm currently doggy-sitting a great big Newfoundland Labrador. And I imagined her, Luna, here and down on the ground. You know, she'd be sniffing everything. And it was really freeing to imagine myself as Luna and then just sticking my face into the root ball and enjoying the senses on the ground a lot.”

“I feel a sense of timelessness. It just feels like this is endless. I mean, that's the only way I can describe it. I don't know what eternity feels like, but for me it is eternity because these trees have been here for probably as long as I have and will be here much longer. There's this stability and groundedness that feels real permanent.”

Larry responds: “Picking up on the sense of timelessness -  I've really become interested in this evolutionary story that is the story of the Earth forming. And I'm just blown away at this story and what science tells us about us all having shared DNA with everything else and going right back to the first cells that formed in the ocean 4 billion years ago. And I see appreciating this body at this time in this great evolutionary process. I know it's like a snapshot. It's a piece of this evolutionary process that was different a thousand years ago. It will be different in a thousand years from now in small increments. And Earth works in these larger increments of time where things evolve, where a million years is not that much to the earth.”

We’re invited to explore another sense, touch, in the forest. Exploring again individually, and sharing in group. 

 “I feel like the duff is so thick and so soft that we aren't on solid ground. We're being cushioned and held when we walk around in here.”

Duff is decaying green matter that covers the ground around trees.

Larry comments further on the area’s vegetation. “It's amazing how there's mostly evergreen huckleberry here. You don't see many ferns. You go down in elevation a little bit, you'll see a band of ferns before you get to the wetland. And then all of a sudden you'll see salmonberry.”

Next, we explore sound. 

Eventually, again, voices begin to call out.

“I hear the silence of the circle. And even with the noises, we can hear the greater silence. There's a top layer and a lower layer.”

“I love the sort of bushy sound of the wind that it makes when it's up high in the trees. Very rhythmic and like a lullaby, cradling. I hear the earth singing to me. One verse of it is - I give you oxygen, sing me your carbon dioxide. I sing for you and you sing for me.”

“I really noticed when I closed my eyes that I could hear a more distant sound like the faint dog barking in the distance. But I didn't hear that when my eyes were open. Blocking out all the other senses really opens up your ears more.”

Finally, there is a “heart and gut check” as Larry puts it, around the circle. Hearts and guts here are full of thanks.

“Gratefulness. Being in a beautiful place and grateful that we're able to experience it. This is healing. When our hearts and guts are hurting from the peripheral noise and the news, we have this, always, we can come here and feel healed.”

“I found the intermingling of grief and gratitude. I noticed holding both joy and grief at the same time.”

“I feel really grateful for the earth, the body and my body and this earth and all these earth bodies around the circle, all of us together and giving something back here. Giving something back. That’s so important.”

And someone says, quietly:

“Peace.”

Larry finished the morning back at Storyhouse with a nettle tea moment.
Thank you, Larry, for this beautiful Saturday morning forest/body sensory experience.

We received lovely feedback about Larry's Sensory Forest Walk.
Here is what participant dee elle wrote in:

i loved this event. it's the second forest walk i've attended- tho this one was much bigger!!
Larry does a wonderful job of sharing and facilitating. even as someone who does a LOT of walks in the woods, connecting, i learned new things. how lovely to share the forest with others in quiet contemplation and listening with a host who authentically loves and appreciates his surroundings <3
THANKYOU!