As dusk arrived on Thursday eve, standing in my bedroom, I felt a powerful call from Boann. I often hear her beckoning me to come but this was different, more of a demand. Winter had stolen me from her, as floods and constant rain completely covered the stepping stones I use to cross her falls and enter the forest at her edge. I was shocked to realise it had been months since I sat with her daily. I rushed to her, passing fields turned to lakes in her wake. Her sound was so ferocious it filled the air as I grew closer, copious amounts of water rushing over rock with nowhere left to go. Trees laid to rest within the deluge of her banks, some split in two by her force. I submerged my boots and knees entirely in her waters to cross and reach her side. Smiling as I reached out and greeted the familiar flora I have grown to love, I was content but still of the human realm, not fully dissolved into the land as I usually am. She was impatient, shushing me, ordering my focus into being. I softened. Melted upon a fallen trunk. Her deafening white noise uncomfortable until it became a trance. With notebook in hand, I began to write her message and this poem came, with a beautiful and mind altering experience of what constitutes fear in our realm and hers.
I have struggled with mental fear from a childhood lived in it but of late, my fear has been physical. My body exists in high cortisol, regular freeze, heart palpitations and tightness of the chest muscles. I have been relentless in my attempts to “fix” it. With frustrated narratives coursing through me, “I am no longer afraid, why can’t my body catch up.” “It holds me back in a way that is infuriating as I know the power I hold behind this ice wall”. Boann stripped me of my limited understanding. She showed me the deer startling and the shrew scurrying away and explained that their reaction was physical but not fear. Heart palpitations, high cortisol, tightening of the chest muscles, these were the attributes of instinct in action. Animals do not rue over the snapping twig that caused them to scarper. Humans have placed labels on much of this Earth, fear, is a concept that combines physical reactivity with mental load but what if we were to separate them? If, as in nature, physical responses to perceived threat were simply the rise and fall of an activation that returns to homeostasis without story. Another layer of intuition.
I felt at odds with myself before now. How can my intuition and extra sensory abilities be so strong if my instincts are off? But this age we are living through is filled with daily triggers that feel like threat. As we grow more intuitive perhaps it should be expected that we too, become more instinctual, and in doing so, more open to the frequency of danger, and our bodies physical response to it. Returning my wet feet to the leaves and mud beneath me I wept. No longer resentful of my body as if it betrayed me, I saw that in fact, she was rising beside my intuition all along. Boann urged all of us, to step outside the notions of fear and spread our gifts into the world. She showed me that as she regularly pushed her waters into surrounding spaces, eventually, this would change the course of the river. Conscious beings, creatives among us, we are the waters inciting change, through spreading our knowing upon dry lands, we nourish humanity and change its direction.
I am ever in awe of how this land guides us. Every lesson, is available beside river or tree. I hope this hazelnut reaches you, from Boann through me, when it is most needed.
