A Nature Walk with ‘Sheila’
There are those who are the salt of the Earth. They may not look outwardly prosperous or ‘wealthy’, but their wealth lies in their empathy, compassion, resilience, and sense of awareness. You feel the flow of their life-force when you are around them, and in their presence, some droplets from the stream of their innerspring of spirit get sprinkled onto you!
Our guide for the nature walk at the resort today was “Sheila”. Of ‘Native American’ descent, we found out very quickly that this was not just an ordinary ‘walk’ for her. She gave us a bit of the history of the area, and patiently educated us about almost every tree, shrub and flower that we walked by. Her eyes would light up, her step would quicken, her voice would rise in pride when we came across native species – palms, palmettos, spiders, butterflies, alligators, and more.
The highlight of the walk – as she told me after it was over – was the ‘calling of the owls’. It was the first time that she had been able to attract not one or two, but four or five owls with her calling. As she explained it, the call went something like “who. who. who cooks for you.” To watch a ‘barred owl’ in full flight is a thing of beauty. To hear Sheila interact and engage with them with her voice was like having premium seating at nature’s orchestra performance with a master conductor.
There were conversations about bullfrogs, cicadas, all kinds of water fowl, swans, snakes, armadillos, wolves, deer, bobcats, and of course, alligators. There were woodpecker and finch sightings, the Florida ‘state butterfly’ (zebra longwing, horizontal black and yellow stripes), and even a monarch butterfly or two.
Yes, she was knowledgeable about her environment, about the land, the plants, and the animals. More than that, What transpired in those two plus hours of ‘walking’ with this wonderfully graceful, grey-haired, ‘salt of the earth’ spirit-guide of a human-being was the realization that I was walking with a deeply caring individual whose entire mind, body, spirit and soul lives in awareness and flow. It brought the realization to me that our guides, our gurus, our mentors, are available to us at many of life’s turns – though we may to make a bit of an effort and walk into their presence with an open heart.
No, not an effort to actively go ‘seek’ them, but to make ourselves available to be led “off the beaten pathways” of our everyday lives into unfamiliar territory. And sometimes, that ‘effort’ may mean that we may have to awaken at 6:30am on a “vacation day” – to go discover our spirit-guide, to bring ourselves into their field of awareness, and discover our flow in That serendipity.
Namaste,
Kumud
P.S. Join us in our weekly twitter chat, with hashtag #SpiritChat ~ Sunday August 2nd at 9amET/1pmUTC. We will discuss “Awareness and Flow”. If you have some favorite ‘flow’ experiences, particularly those that came about as a result of serendipity, please do share. Thank you, and Namaste 🙂
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