swift scenes-the forest

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The forest was old.  It knew many secrets.  Secrets that it guarded, given to it by the Creator.  The forest as it grew learned the keys to this world.  It knew what was needed to thrive.  The forest had passed many hundreds of years standing strong and protecting itself and its creation from what passed it by.

The forest was sacred.  As the land around it was taken, through need, through exploration, through progress, the forest remained.  As if some great force was protecting it, it continued its calling.  Its purpose.  The forest housed life, from the long buried earthworms, the most diminutive of insects that crawled across its roots, to the animals that sought refuge inside the sturdiest of trunks and the birds that flew among its guarded canopy. 

The forest was a sanctuary.  Created from all that was good, it grew in its own time and at its own pace.  Life flourished.  Native flowers blossomed unhindered.  The shaded ferns unfurling themselves each year.  The branches lay dormant but each spring flourished in a vibrant green that burst forth in new hope and thrived until the period of decline came, itself so beautiful, heralding a last glorious brilliance of color before coating the soil in a blanket of detritus that would serve it in its rest and retreat the following winter.

Any living thing that came to the forest thrived.  Plant, animal, even human.  Humans were a rare sight in a forest this deep.  The few humans that did venture to the forest left different than when they came.  The ones that came to the forest had open hearts.  They felt a longing to something more primal, some draw to the nature of things, some grasp of the understanding that there is more to what is seen on the surface of things.  The things the forest knew but could not teach, only provide.