My skin is covered in bark

Unless you're a fan of Lord of the Rings, trees are very static things. Trees don't fight back, they don't wage war. They stay, and watch, and listen, and wait. Trees let time pass them, and don't worry much about it.

The Magical Workings that the brilliant HecateDemeter is leading us through as we work for the bettering of America brought trees to the forefront of my mind recently. (as in, the linked post recently) She bids you sit, listen, and find out what the trees have to tell you.

I did so - I did as I was bid and walked through the meditation. The trees welcomed me as they have in the past, but this time one step further. One step closer. I was brought inside.

It's odd feeling the bark on your skin, or more accurately AS your skin. The leaves not just in your hair, but coming from your hair. The soil in and under and through your toes. Light is so much brighter, so much cleaner, and so much more warming. It's not hard to see why trees like to grow so tall. It's snuggling up to your favorite heat source.

There's a smell that comes with all this, a deep scent that is equal parts inviting and repulsing. It's sort of sticky, you'll smell it for days after you wash it off and I get it every time I go into my garden. It's rot and birth all in one. Trees smell like that when you go deep enough. Parts of them are dying while other parts thrive. It's a cycle. We have to remember that.

The wind doesn't feel the same through leaves as it does through hair or fingers or eyelashes. It tickles your nose, but trees don't have noses to tickle. Wind, against a tree, is a dress or a scarf or a shroud. A gentle breeze is a loose silk skirt dancing around the bark, touching and caressing and playing with the leaves as they fall. A gale force storm is a heavy boiled wool coat smacking and gaping and being thrown around against the trunk, ripping leaves off their branches like hair caught in a brush or a car door.

The best part though? Is the sound. Trees may be silent to the vast majority, and from the outside it's easy to mistake their quiet as complete. But quite the contrary. Their always talking. There's always movement. They cannot contain the sound but we have to slow down to hear it.

You may go, you may gain entry, you may want to stay forever but that is not your place. You are not a tree. You may visit, but you may not stay.

If you go, and try, and cannot gain entry, don't cry. There are other places for you to go, to visit. Perhaps the stars have messages for you, or the water is waiting patiently to show you secrets. Perhaps the stones have notes to leave you, or the animals wonder what is taking you so long to find them.

So sit, meditate, and see if anyone is waiting to talk to you.