As I was walking in the wetlands this morning, I was asking myself about the word “collaboration.” I seem to be so fixated on this possibility or way of being. In my greatest expression of myself I seem to always be looking for ways to collaborate with others. The pull, the magnetic attraction, to be in the presence of others creating together is enormous for me—it has always been an essential part of me.

Then I started to break it down wondering which shadowy imposter is raising its head and wanting to keep me contained. I was starting to tell myself that I have always been dependent on others; never doing individual mastery; making myself feel bad for just wanting to be ONE with ALL. The dissolver shows up along with the controller. I am reminded of my childhood and how often I felt free when I was outside alone. Loneliness rears its head. I start to pray, cry and ask my grandmother to help me. These days feel very lonely, feeling it all in my stomach. Keep walking—let it out—keep surrendering into it all.

As I looked out on the the tall grasses and ponds, listening to the birds and smelling spring in the air, I had a deeper realization that every single bit of nature is that individual expression of soul. Each blade of grass that came from a seed that has a unique design, for example, blue stem grass or a red-winged black bird, is, on its own fully expressed.

And at the same time, it makes up the whole of both the immediate wetland I walk on as well as in creation itself. Each bit of vegetation, thriving or barely living; each animal at home or just migrating through; each stone or bit of dirt that has never moved or was bulldozed in to make a trail—each individual expression of the natural world is doing its part right at this moment to be a piece of the whole. Each individual everything is collaborating together in its aloneness. Not one flower or bird is ever co-dependent. Not one bit of nature feels worthless or needed. No one is asking to be identified or identifying itself because of the existence of the other.

Every living bit of matter is a collaboration for ALL to exist. What a beautiful orchestration and symphony of all expressions within this moment in time.

And something about the wetlands, a most fertile place where water and land co-mingle...ripe with energetic-motion. Seasonally, there is a shift, the land becomes more prominent when it is drier. In a wetter season, the area is more marshy. A transitional space ever changing, growing, decaying…

I am a wetland paradox—
experiencing the sticky mud of stuckness
along with being the toroidal flow as cattail reed existing happily alone.

I go to the wetlands when I hit those “choke points.”
I hold my compass and sing loudly “correct orientation!”
I leave with a feeling of peace that I am “infinite creative potential.”
Nature is one extraordinary expression of unified collaboration.