The Nest & New Beginnings

When I walk down the back, I skirt one side of the labyrinth, go through the garden, alongside the cypress trees on the boundary and down through the old paddock at the back. The paddock is mostly grass, with some of the scrubby misunderstood marginal plants that appear when you leave the land alone. Over time I have worn a thin track through the grass. It is two footfalls wide and not quite straight. It has a slight natural weave to it. 

Before I get to the path I bend and duck between two wires of the unused, but still in place, electric fence. Then I wind my way around a messy wood pile deliberately left for small beings to make their homes in, and step over a small branch that I could move but probably never will. 

At the far end the land falls away toward the creek. Either side of the gate at the end is a tree—a towering pine on one side, and a thickly trunked macrocarpa on the other. The grass is thin here. In this deep constant shade grow violets, white ones, that spread, thicken and flower year on year.

I walked there this morning, the ground dewy, the air mild under the blanket of cloud. Midwinter, and my bare feet inside my gumboots only slightly feeling the chill. 

Through the fence, around the woodpile, over that errant branch. Tracing the path, I walked in my own footsteps for the thousandth time. Each time, it is the same. Each time it is different. 

I remember, too late, to stop and quieten. It is not until I bluster onto the scene and startle the pukeko, a hare, the chaffinches feeding on thistleheads that I remember I was going to be stealthy this time. I was going to sneak up, watchful. I was going to stalk like a predator. I was going to hold my breath like prey, watching before moving. I was going to see them all before they saw me. 

Instead I unthinkingly lumber along, creatures spray up in every direction, and I swear next time I’ll remember.

There are no hawks today. I don’t hear tui or korimako. There is no gravelly cry from a heron overhead, no plovers, not even the annoyed call of the paradise duck when I dare step out into the open beyond the gate. 

It is grey, wet and still. Nothing of note. Even the creek’s run and burble seems subdued. I turn back. 

Through the gate, pressing again the thin path, avoiding the violets not yet in flower. I think about how we make meaning. How it is in our nature to read things. How natural, innate it is to human beings. 

It is in our nature to read things, we are born to read and find our meaning, I think again. I pause mid-step. On the path at my feet is a nest. Here on this path, no wider than my two feet pressed together, this path which I only just walked and saw nothing, now lies a nest.

Nests often appear for me, often marking new beginnings. But this is a different kind of beginning. 

The Room: a place for Conversations with Life begins today. For Marion and I it is a continuation of how we live, but it is the beginning of inviting you to come with us—back into, deeper into, your own conversation with Life. 

This nest is made mainly of roots, something I haven't seen before. We too are deeply rooted. Living in conversation with, in concert with Life and all that is going on around is what human beings have always done. 

This nest reminds me that The Room is the start of something new, and a return to something always known.