The Forest Remembers You

There are places where the water listens.

Where the trees lean in a little.

Where even the smallest fish seem to know something about you that you don’t.

That’s what the Northwest feels like to me.

Not a region. Not a backdrop. A presence. A quiet, breathing presence that holds you steady when everything else is unraveling.

Years ago, in late fall, I was leading a youth crew—snow just beginning to whisper over the pine needles. We took a break from trail work and wandered down to the edge of Crater Lake. The water was that impossible turquoise that makes you question your own eyes. Cold, clear, ancient. I knew I’d be getting in before we even left the van. At the lake’s edge, I climbed a rock, stripped down to my swimsuit, and dove.

Underwater, time stopped. That aqua blue wrapped around me completely. I opened my eyes and the world disappeared. No voices. No decisions. Just color and stillness. I didn’t feel cold—I felt awake. As if the lake had wiped the slate clean, then gently handed me back to myself.

And this is what the wild does when it’s allowed to remain wild.

It doesn’t just offer beauty.

It lets you become something truer.

Softer. Unhidden.

Another time, I was swimming in a quiet alpine lake, trying to understand and dampen a flame that felt as if it might burn me alive. I swam slowly, as if the water itself might calm the firestorm and allow me to choose my next move. That’s when I felt them—small, sharp nibbles on my skin. At first I recoiled. Then I looked down.

Dozens of tiny fish surrounded me, eating the dead skin from my arms and legs like it was a delicacy. It wasn’t painful—just strange. Intimate. I stayed.

And something in me shifted. I felt completely connected. Locked in. Utterly safe.

Eventually I swam to shore, followed a creek upstream, and waded through clear shallows, watching tadpoles scatter ahead of my feet. Feeling like I was being watched I looked up—and there, perched atop a weathered snag, sat a bald eagle, watching me like I was part of the landscape, not a visitor.

Sometimes we think of wilderness as a place to conquer. But it’s not. It’s a place to be seen by something bigger than ourselves.

Years earlier, on another trail, my woods boss told me to close my eyes and follow him. “Ok, you can open them now,” he said. When I did, Mount Rainier stood before me—massive and solitary across a wide, glacial valley. Unshakable. Suspended in its own gravity. I gasped. We stood there laughing, overwhelmed by the kind of beauty that leaves no room for words.

Because what do you say when the Earth shines so bright?

The wild isn’t separate from us.

It’s the part of us that still remembers how to be quiet.

How to be real.

How to dive in when called.

How to stay still when something small and miraculous touches us.

How to belong.