The Trees Remember Too

Arrival, Ocean, and Ancient Witnesses

By the time I arrived in Mexico, my body was ready to be still.

Not the performative stillness of rest as an accomplishment, but the quiet that comes when movement has done all it can do. The kind that arrives after cities, after snow, after holding and releasing what needed my touch.

I came expecting the ocean to remember me.

Water is often where we place our faith in memory. The way it holds ancestors, crossings, grief, and return. I thought if I sat long enough at the edge of it, something ancient would rise to meet me.

And it did. But it wasn’t only the water.

Alongside the ocean stood ancient treetops, their roots steady, their branches unhurried. They did not shimmer or crash. They simply stayed.

Watching. 

Holding. Witnessing.

It became clear to me then: Memory does not belong to water alone. The trees remember too.

They remember storms survived. Seasons endured. Hands that leaned against them in grief. Children who climbed and disappeared into adulthood. They remember stillness as a practice, not a pause.

Each day, I found myself sitting beneath them. Not seeking answers, but allowing myself to be seen. The ocean offered rhythm. The trees offered patience.

Here, I felt myself tied together to water and roots, to movement and staying, to what remembers me even when I forget myself.

Winter rest here has been about learning to receive both.

The ocean teaches me how to let things move through me. The trees teach me how to stay. Together, they are reminding me that remembrance is not always loud. Sometimes it is quiet, vertical, and deeply rooted.

In this season of winter rest, may I practice arrival not just in place, but in presence.  May I be held by more than one kind of remembering. May I trust that stillness does not mean stagnation, but relationship.

Stillness Practice: Sit near something ancient (water, tree, stone). Ask not what it can give you, but what it has already witnessed. Then listen without urgency.