“The forest says many things. It does not require us to obey them all.” — Onyx Iskra
Dear Soulfire Traveler,
October has a way of making inventory visible.
The light changes. The trees begin releasing what no longer belongs to the season. Gardens thin. Cupboards fill. What was abundant only a few weeks ago suddenly looks finite, and somewhere beneath the beauty of all that gold and red is an old seasonal question:
What do I need to attend to?
This month’s story, Thank You, Crow, follows a Squirrel trying to answer a much more ordinary version of that question. He has work to finish before the cold comes. He has somewhere to be.
And then the forest begins talking.
Something beautiful he had not intended to want. Something distant that startles the body before the mind has decided whether it should. And, further along the path at the third tree, someone waited perched at exactly the right height to be heard, who notices things. Who is not wrong, exactly, about any of them.
Perhaps you know that particular afternoon. Not necessarily because someone or something deliberately set out to distract or courage you. Sometimes the forest simply gets loud.
There are opportunities.
🐦⬛Warnings.
🐦⬛Opinions.
🐦⬛Possibilities.
🐦⬛Things that happened before.
🐦⬛Things that might happen next.
🐦⬛Someone who thinks you should reconsider.
🐦⬛Someone else who thinks you should hurry.
🐦⬛Your own body, remembering an old danger that may not belong to this particular day.
And suddenly a decision that once felt fairly simple is carrying the weight of twenty other things.
One of the quieter lessons from the story is that information and authority are not the same thing.
Something may be true without deserving control over what happens next. The beautiful thing really is beautiful. The distant sound really may mean something. Even the very reasonable voice on the branch may be entirely correct about the root, the weather, the fox from earlier in the week, or the soft spot.
We can listen without surrendering the path.
We often imagine that good decisions arrive with a feeling of perfect clarity. Sometimes they do. More often, we make them while the barking hasn’t quite stopped and the branch above us is still offering commentary. Difficulty afterward is not proof of a wrong turn. Some worthwhile paths contain spiderwebs. Some poor choices come decorated with apples.
Agency does not require omniscience. It requires the willingness to hear what the forest is saying, while making the decision what you do next.
The tale follows the Squirrel a little farther, through a climb I won’t describe and toward an ending I won’t resolve here. I’ll only say that Crow is still talking when the climbing starts, and that being right about a great many small things is not at all the same as being owed the last word.
October Practice—What gets heard but not obeyed?
Take a few quiet minutes with something you are currently considering, changing, beginning, ending, or simply carrying.
Write the decision or question at the top of a page. Then notice the voices around it.
🍂 What is the apple? Something attractive that might pull you toward another path, not because it is wrong, but because it is appealing.
🍂 What is the distant bark? A fear, memory, bodily reaction, or old experience that deserves acknowledgment but may belong to another time.
🍂 Who or what is the Crow? The reasonable commentary. The warnings. The advice. The have-you-considereds. The possibilities that may be true without necessarily being decisive.
🍂 And finally, ask: what actually decides?
Some voices may deserve your attention without deserving your obedience. Some information may belong in the decision. Some may simply be noticed and left where you found it.
Not every voice needs to fall silent before you move.
You may simply discover that you have heard enough.
Perhaps there is a tree you already know you are ready to climb.
With fire kept,
Maven
🐿️ 🍎🍁 🐦⬛🕸️🌰