Our Sacred Forest. Scorched.

"I was living in a rainforest. I knew the trees and the frogs, the lush green life. With no warning, I got shoved into the desert. I know this is the desert. So take back your plastic palm trees and your cups of water; quit telling me it's the same. I know better. I know where I live."
- Megan Devine, from my collected journals.

I was living in the forest....

I know where I live...
Here's how I live in the desert...

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I was living in the forest. I danced with the tall evergreens in the gusts. I waved back at the aspen trees who eagerly said hello with the breeze. I clothed myself in dynamic, dappled sunlight that filtered through the branches. This was lovely, but lovelier for having not been alone. This forest was inhabited by two souls who lazed under the stars and told stories round the fire. Their cheeks were rosied from love, lust, and light—by day their sun, by night their campfire. Their eyes they sparkled from their lives—yesterday, today and tomorrow. In that forest, beer stayed cold in the stream and bacon tasted best with some burnt coals. In that forest, the dirt under their fingernails smelled clean, and their love-tousled hair became their magnificent manes. That forest was the dream for which they had not dared to dream, at least not too loudly.

But this dream came. With force. With gravity. Living in a forest like that takes guts. It takes showing up every day with nothing to show but you. It means being little in something big. Being nothing in something. This is not for the faint of heart.

And his heart. It came with a darkness. How much before? How much after? I don’t know. I don’t think he knew. He knew it was there but could not find the beginning or the end of the dark rainbow, his pot of gold that would release him from its hold. Release him into love.

So the forest began to darken. Blight invaded the trees and the sunlight was shadowed by thunderous clouds. I called to him, but the storm stirred the bare branches into a tremendous roar, and he could not find me. Could not find him. And I wept and wept running between trees searching for him, scared of where I might find him. Because I knew when his heart filled with dark, it would pass, but feared the day he forgot that it would.

I knew if that day came, he would find himself in the most sacred place of our forest. It was an aspen grove, ancient and sprawling. Where the ground was soft enough to sleep, wearing only each other, and the snow never too deep for a fire and a proposal. It was a place where people unconsciously whispered and absently touched trees. It was love made live with each organic detail. He said he’d never been happier than he was with me in the aspen grove, and the shine in his eyes and catch in his voice told me this was as true a thing as a person could say.

So. He went there. And let the darkness take his heart.

And when he did. I can’t say what happened to his heart. Though the wind in those trees sounds a lot like his laugh. But I know what happened to the darkness. It ran like molten lava out from the body that was no longer his and took what was left of our forest. It swallowed streams and leveled fox dens. It blackened each tree and scattered the birds. And I climbed up into the tree where he carved:

SW

SS

And watched in horror as I bore witness to our bravely and still barely dared dream destroyed.

Now, the lava has passed and left an alien landscape of gnarled trees and scorched earth. And I walk like a ghost through this graveyard of a forest. Lost and uncaring. Whispering his name. Pressing my face against the earth to see if I can hear any life beneath. There is nothing. The birds do not intend to return, and I cannot blame them. The sun barely seeps through the ash, but I’m okay with that. It makes a blanket over me, letting me lie with his darkness. My skin sallows and the soot gets in my eyes, but I am near him here. Not near enough but as near as I can be. If I cannot have him. I will have his darkness, and I will love his darkness as he could not.