Changing the Channel

A Path Back to Presence

It was two days into the camping trip when I realized I hadn’t checked the news. No alerts. No headlines. No comments to scroll through. The noise of gossip faded. All that remained was the sound of the forest. The crackle of the fire. The soft thud of my daughter’s footsteps as she skipped back from the ocean with a story in her eyes. At night, the silence was even more profound. The redwoods watched over us, towering and still. It felt like protection because it was. The stillness was a gift. A gentle power we all have. And somewhere deep inside my nervous system, something ancient began to recalibrate. Maybe I was simply remembering.

Held by the redwoods, I began to remember what I’d forgotten. Presence. It often comes from being. From listening. From turning toward what is alive and rooted and ancient. The forest became my teacher. The silence was the voice I had longed for. I realized that if I place my attention on the Earth, on each breath, on the moment that was sitting right in front of me, then something within softens. A new alignment takes place as if I were inching closer to home. In that quiet, I remembered how to belong again. A tree never questions its belonging. It simply grows.