Hearts Content: What the Old Woods Whispered to My Sensitive Soul
An imperfect reflection on awe
If you ever travel through northwestern Pennsylvania, there’s a place I’d recommend to you, one sensitive person to another.
Get far off the interstate and check out Hearts Content Scenic area, a forest protected from logging in the 1800s. Today, this Natural National Landmark within the Allegheny National Forest offers a winding interpretive trail through 300 to 400-year-old white pines, hemlock, and beech trees.
Trees older than our country. Anchored through the flow of time, largely impervious to human interference. Oh my!
On Mother’s Day, I had the honor of visiting these trees. I talked to them, telling them my troubles, confessing my poor choices, sharing my hopes. And I listened for their guidance.
The trees did not disappoint me.
Trees never do.
With age and experience, they whispered, murmured, signed, buzzed. Filtering the wind and sunlight, the trees told balsamy secrets to my spirit, my body, my soul.
My emotions and mind released into their wisdom.
I experience a profound sense of awe and wonder in places like Hearts Content that goes beyond nature appreciation. It is truly a spiritual experience, one that my sensitivity makes possible.
Purified by the majesty of branches swaying 150 feet above me, I rediscovered myself. I stepped out from the canopy, ready to start my day anew and leaving behind all that no longer serves me.
Two things stand out to me about my time at Hearts Content. First, this was one of the rare times where every person we encountered in the woods was quiet, almost reverential. No loud footsteps or conversations broke through the sounds the rest of nature was making.
It was as though each person stepping under this ancient canopy agreed that the space was sacred, calling for us to soften our human impact accordingly. The quiet was a luxury far too limited in daily life.
The other thing that strikes me is how Hearts Content is an old, wizened landscape. Obviously. But it has a look, an energy, that reminds me of the wise crone. The ground is covered with broken limbs, generations of fallen trees in various stages of conversion to mulch by moss and small animals. Many of the tree trunks are bare, except for a puff of leaves or needles at their crowns.
The longevity of this old lady forest was evident, as was her power. Yet there was a gentle, benevolent quality to her energy as well. I felt drawn to sit with her, listen to her stories, learn from her wisdom.
Someone will inevitably scold me for anthropomorphizing the forest and the trees. Guilty as charged.
But I lack an adequate vocabulary to describe this experience without resorting to my human frame of reference. How else can I explain how I related to something so much older and grander than I am? How can I translate the ways that the nature around me communicates wordlessly to me?
If you get the chance to go there, perhaps you’ll find a different way to describe it.
In the meantime, please forgive me. I only wanted to welcome you into this world, this relationship I had with this forest, imperfectly as I can do that.
Like its cheesy name suggests, I found my Hearts Content in this ancient woods. May you find yours, too. This experience of awe is just what sensitive souls require.
Where do you experience awe? How can you talk about it with others? I’d love for you to let me know.
Hi Lori. Thanks for subscribing to Living Earthwise. I also subscribed to your post. I am also a psychologist. PhD University of Florida. I look forward to reading your posts and I hope you enjoy the ones I write.
You don’t need to apologize for giving the forest a soul and the trees a voice. To speak of them with human-like qualities isn’t a mistake, it’s a remembering. A remembering that we are not separate, that wisdom speaks through roots and bark just as it does through bone and breath. Your words honored the spirit of the forest beautifully. Thank you for listening deeply and for letting us listen alongside you.