Nature Speaks

At the edge of the wood lived a woman who seemed to belong to the land itself. Some said she was as old as the oak roots, others that she had once been a child of the village who chose to stay with the forest when the rest returned home.

She listened more than she spoke. She listened to the swallows, circling and calling high above. She listened to the streams running over stone, carrying the cool voice of the hills. She listened to the soil, rich and breathing beneath her hands. From these voices, she drew her knowing.

The villagers came to her quietly. They asked when to sow their seeds, how to ease their weariness, how to find their way back when they felt lost. She did not always answer directly. Instead, she would hand them a sprig of herbs, or walk them to the water’s edge, or tell them to wait until the moon was thinner in the sky. And somehow, in these small gestures, they found what they needed.

Children loved her most. She taught them how to follow the footprints of deer, how to tell oak from ash by the sound of their leaves, how to greet the first star at dusk. With her, the forest felt alive, leaning closer, whispering its secrets.

She was not apart from the world, but a bridge between the village and the wild. A reminder that the earth is not something outside of us – it is something we carry in our breath, in our bones, in the deep remembering of our hearts.

A Lesson for You

Stories such as this are not only about a woman long ago. They are about us, here and now. The woman at the edge of the wood lives wherever someone dares to listen closely to the living world.

We, too, can pause to hear the wind, to notice the language of birds, to remember that we are held within a greater conversation. In doing so, we recover something often forgotten: the sense that life itself is wise, that guidance is always near, if only we grow quiet enough to receive it.

Perhaps your own “edge of the wood” is not a forest at all. Perhaps it is a garden, a park, a single tree on the street where you walk each day. Go there. Sit in stillness. Listen. You may find that, like the woman, you carry a wisdom that does not come from books or from noise, but from the simple, steady voice of the world around you.