The Portal

Resonating with the universe

Stepping into the dampened hush of the forest was as quiet as diving underwater just over an ocean reef.

A different world than the one I had been in just moments before beckoned me forward. I could still hear the ringing of the bells from the Hanuman temple in the distance, but, here, moss hugged the sides of ancient trees, and the sun barely had the energy to peek through the treetops.

Tendrils of fog pirouetted around slabs of gray rock and collected on the tips of fern fronds. And behind it all was the steady drip, drip of dewdrops spilling over and falling through the foliage and onto the forest floor. It was as if time had slowed here, or even stopped.

My breath snagged in my throat and a little hum of excitement and nervousness rippled through me.

When I was a kid, I used to go into the forest to climb through a fork in a magical tree and be transported to another time and place. The time and place varied. Sometimes I was taken back to the land where the Native Americans of upstate New York called their home. I fashioned pots of mud and clay and placed them in a sunny patch to dry. Other times, I went all the way back to caveman days. Sometimes, I took friends with me to these places.

But mostly, I went alone.

And alone was where I found myself that morning in the woods above Santa Cruz. Behind me was the Mount Madonna Center where my dear friend and harmonium teacher, Girish Cruden, was leading a retreat, which I had come to attend. Ahead of me, there were miles and miles of Forest Service trails to explore. And I had two hours yet before I needed to be back.

I ventured through the heavy fog, down the narrow winding path to a trickle of a river that looked as if it had not too long-ago seen water move through it with much more ferocity. Huge boulders lay in a tumble at the bottom of a dry waterfall. But only moss and a fluorescent-yellowish lichen spilled over them now.

I ascended via a winding path to the other side of the ravine and stepped onto a Forest Service Trail. Which way to go?

I decided to take the high road. I climbed up and up, meandering until I stumbled across a quite amazing meditation swing hanging from a wizened old oak tree. Taking a few minutes to enjoy this new delight, I scrambled up onto the swing, which was really just a piece of plywood suspended from the branches overhead by a system of ropes.

And, it was heavenly, that swing! It made me feel like a baby being rocked into calmness by Mother Nature herself.

Eventually, noting the time, I realized that I had to make a choice. I could go back by using a well-marked trail through a meadow and come out right into the heart of the Mt. Madonna Center.

Or I could go back the way I came.

Remembering the beauty and the sense of peacefulness and timelessness of the woods, I opted for the latter.

Heading back, I retraced my steps, or so I thought.

I was sure I remembered particular signs along the way — an overgrown wild azalea, a particular fork in the road, but I soon realized that I had somehow ended up on a completely different trail.

I back-tracked to the last fork, positive once again that I was on my way back to camp and to a shower, ready to appear on-time for Chant Camp. But it soon became apparent that I was quite lost in the woods.

I began to walk faster.

I began to run.

I went down a narrow winding trail, and ended up at a beautiful little spring, but I hardly took the time to notice it because I knew now that I was going to be late!

A sense of panic began to gnaw at me. I was pretty sure that I could always find my way back to the swing and to the well-marked trail.

But I wasn’t positive.

And it should be so much faster if I could just find the path that I had come in on.

But I never could find it.

Climbing back up from the little spring, I stumbled and twisted my knee. Fighting back tears, I glanced up at the treetops, and it was then that I realized the reason I had come to this place this weekend.

In recent weeks, I had spent a fair amount of time talking to my yoga students about being “in the moment,” and about how “dissolving time” was, in my mind, one of the greatest teachings of the Tantric tradition.

This teaching was something I had embraced, and yet, here I was in these beautiful woods, thinking not about the glint of sunlight through the overhead canopy, or the carpet of fallen leaves on the trail, or the hushed silence that is so hard to find back home, but which resonates through your very cells here.

No, I was thinking about how I was not going to have time to take a shower before class that morning, and then about the fact that there was no way I was going to be on time, even without a shower.

The anxiety had built to the point that I could not see the very woods around me.

For some reason, “Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya,” one of the chants we would likely be learning to play on the harmonium this weekend, began to loop through my mind.

To me, this chant means that Oṁ, the resonance of the universe, is within us, and is around us, and also sings inside every other being in existence, as well as in the rocks and trees and sparkling waters.

And, I had this epiphany that, yes, I was going to be late, and that there was nothing I could do about it.

But here I was, now, in a breathtakingly awe-inspiring place. A sense of ease settled over me like a mantle of new-fallen leaves.

And so, I stopped running, and I started noticing the details of the forest again — the incredible delicacy of the ferns, the vitality of the azaleas that needed no tending in the wild, the faint blue of the sky winking overhead through the lifting fog.

And I was late to Chant Camp.

I showed up splattered with mud, with my hair in tangles, but with a glow on my face and in my soul, nourished by my “time-out-of-time” in the woods.

But the oddest thing happened the next morning. Hard-headed-me ventured out on the same small path once more. But I never could find the connector to the Forest Service trail again.

It was almost as if a portal, such as the ones from my childhood imagination, had truly opened up the day before, and had allowed me passage to a secret place and time.

Thank you for coming along with me on a magical morning in the woods. You might also enjoy:

Story and photos ©Erika Burkhalter. All rights reserved.