In Illinois, in midwinter, the trees are bare and brown. The sky is generally gray, and on most days there isn’t enough sun to satisfy my cats. Without leaves in the way, I can see a mile over to the next hill where there are more brown trees. Brown doesn’t interest me much. I prefer green.
The woods are quiet as I walk down the hill under their spare canopy, follow the creek around the bend where the water has carved a channel into the land, and find a place to sit. Today there is sun, and I lean back against a tree and wait.
Life has moved underground and is preparing for the warmth of spring. Everything around me seems to be frozen or dead. Yet when I look closer, I see the forest’s patchwork of life.There are shades of brown in the trees and bushes. The dry leaves that have papered the ground for months are a spectrum of muted colors — browns, of course, but also blue, red, yellow and purple. Lichen on boulders are colored sage, yellow, gray, black, and orange.
There are also signs of death. Several trees have limbs that have lost their bark. The trunk of one tree is bent at a right angle fifty feet up. I doubt that it will bloom again, but I will watch.
A slight breeze drifts up along the hollow of the creek bed and rustles the leaves. Squirrels emerge to dig for acorns. White-breasted nuthatches twitter in the trees, and a red-tailed hawk circles overhead checking the ground for food.
Over the rise, a crow caws. A response comes from the other direction, and a laid-back conversation begins as each crow thinks about something witty to say before responding. Sometimes, when I have been here, there has been a barred owl and a deer.

I am grateful to have a physical place to go where I can be surrounded by presence of nature and listen for the sacred.