We went to our usual spot at Wyman Park. Much to our pleasant surprise, we saw how much work has taken place by the city to clean up the tons of garbage and piled up nature debris that accumulated in that part of the stream. We’d like to think that our years of bringing this ceremony and reverence to this place had some hand in its healing! We were amazed that this small part of nature was finally receiving the effort of care to clean up the land and water! In our contemplation within this environment, we talked about the language of nature—specifically rocks. Given that all things have energy, they too have their language and Autumn felt how deeply wise and slow their expression is. Rocks have gone through extremes of conditions, from under seas, to being surrounded by plants, and even penetrated by their roots which can expand them. Their gifts require stillness and slowing down to appreciate. My contemplation was simply that our labeling of “indigenous” is rather limited. With all due respect to peoples who have a more recent connection to the corner of earth that they occupy, truly every human is indigenous to the globe. None of us are from another planet. We left with a feeling of hope and gratitude.