Nurse logs as nature's innovators

I used to refer to my daily outings in the woods as walking the dogs or as getting exercise.  A couple of years ago I realized that my walks in the woods were really about me finding ways to regularly access the extraordinary wisdom of nature.

Every walk in the woods is a first.  It does not matter how many hundreds of times I've covered the identical terrain or the same old path; the opportunity to experience the brand new unfolds.

And yet, as I spot newly carved spaces and contours along familiar tracks I am mindful that nature's path through change shows no anxiety, no fretting.  The forest is alive and dying in the same moment.  It is light and dark and whole in its non-duality. 

Lovely is the only way to describe the sweet comfort of nature's divine reliability.

It's in the woods that even negative sentiments invite a positive re-framing.

I mention the epic beauty of the nurse log in the post title because lately I am fascinated with the pageantry of lifeforms thriving atop of nurse logs I spot along woodland edges.

The nurse log plays dead when in fact she is facilitating the emergence of delicate and determined lifeforms.    

The paradox of the nurse log is her stillness; it is in stillness that she activates her ultimate reinvention.   

I am not convinced that a nurse log's capacity to facilitate wildly different life forms is an inevitability of biology.  It seems more an act of consciousness with a corresponding one-of-a-kind outcome.  

Next time you walk the woods, take a look at a nurse log and notice for yourself her wildly creative innovations:

Consider her a healing symphony; the song dormant within all of us life forms.