hierophant

this is how I pray //

I walk in a circle, ending at the beginning. My hands stretch out, ten fingers upright in greeting. A slow-motion reach, air heavy and still. Then, tender contact.

I once read that there are more than 3,000 sensory receptors in each fingertip. 30,000 neurons activated, signaling to my brain: damp, soft, fibrous, furrowed. A mosaic of moss and tannic bark, turkey tail mushrooms sidestepping up up and around. Beneath my hands, intricate and invisible, a braid of vascular tissues transporting water, nutrients, life itself. 

Inhale the wet soil, autumn spice, resin, sorrel, fog, sunlight. 

Exhale the exquisitely hot ache I carry within my throat, acidic as it leaves my mouth. Not a sigh of relief, more like a hiss, a valve release. Steam rising, weightless and free. 

My breath, a vessel for fear, shame, doubt. The tree, a well of oxygen. My hands, beckoning. 

I want, I begin.

This is how I pray. 

Not palms together, but resting in devotion on the contours of Sequoia sempervirens, a coastal redwood, or Quercus douglasii, a blue oak. I didn’t grow up knowing the names of trees, still don’t always recognize their leaf patterns. But I recite California natives like a mantra: redwood-willow-ash-alder-buckeye-oak-sycamore.

My cathedral is ancient, hallowed, wild. A tangle of overstories and understories, of stories around, of stories through. Sometimes I drop to the dirt, a consuming need to touch the serpentine roots, to press myself against the forest floor. Sometimes I turn my gaze upward, throat open, searching for the edges where tree ends and sky begins. Sometimes I stare straight ahead, consider each layered year of growth, each ring its own profound story of emergence. 

I face the tree in concentrated reverence. A hierophant: from Latin, hieros, “sacred,” phainein, “to reveal.” Sacred revelations. Show me truth, show me holy. I make my pleas. Ask my questions. Wonder if I am worthy. 

And then I listen. 

A silent pulse. 

Time bends, slows. Seconds evaporate, minutes dissolve. Each moment an infinite symphony. Memories ripple in concentric circles. 

The wind shifts, the branches whisper. My hands begin to tingle.

What happens next depends on the tree.