The Medicine of Wild Places

Williams Lake, Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range

There is medicine in the mountains that cannot be found anywhere else.

I know that sounds like something you might read on a wooden sign hanging in a gift shop, but the older I get, the more I find it to be true.

Whenever life begins to feel loud, complicated, or heavy, I find myself pulled toward the mountains. Not because they solve my problems or offer answers. But because they remind me of something I tend to forget in the chaos of life.

They remind me that I am part of something greater than myself.

In our modern world, it is easy to believe that healing and wholeness is something we must work for. We analyze, process, optimize, and strive. We search for the next book, the next practice, the next breakthrough that will finally help us arrive at some magical destination called "healed” or “ready” or “enough”. And yet, the mountains ask nothing of us.

They do not care how productive we have been. They do not ask us to explain our relationship status, our bank account, our childhood wounds, or our five-year plan.

They simply stand there. Steady. Ancient. Unhurried.

And somehow, in their presence, something inside me begins to expand.

The fresh air inspires a deeper breath. The vastness of the landscape widens my perspective. The rhythm of my footsteps quiets the constant chatter of the mind. Without even realizing it, I begin to return to myself.

As an energy healer, I often witness people searching for balance outside of themselves. I understand this because I have done it too. Yet some of the most profoundly healing moments in my life have not happened in a treatment room, on a yoga mat, or during meditation.

They have happened while walking a dirt trail. Watching sunlight dance through the trees. Listening to the wind in the branches and the birds’ song greeting the day. I feel so alive standing before a mountain lake gathering the courage to take the icy plunge. Connected to something so vast and ancient it reminds me that my worries are not the whole story. They don’t even deserve their own chapter, and yet so often they are all we can see.

Nature has a way of restoring my relationship with trust.

The river does not force its path. The wildflowers do not question whether they are worthy of blooming. The mountains do not rush to become anything other than what they are.

Everything belongs.

Everything has its place.

Everything unfolds in its own time.

Perhaps that is one of the greatest lessons nature offers us. Not that we need to try harder or heal one more trauma. Not that we need to become someone else. But that we can relax into the wisdom of our own unfolding.

Every time I step into the wild forests of the backcountry, I leave feeling a little more grounded, a little more open-hearted, and a little more connected to the truth that life is supporting me, even when I cannot see the path ahead.

And maybe that is the real medicine.

Not that nature changes us.

But that it helps us remember who we have been all along.