People often contribute to the project in
the name of someone who has passed on. This little note is for those
humans who loved the wild land and the other creatures that live there!
There is a place where all wild things
go after death. A place of
rivers and mountains. A place of long slow beaches and deep
quiet forests. A place of jungles and grass plains and sweet
meadows and cold clear lakes. No rainbow bridge leads to it. But
all the wild ones find it down the dark western road following the
seeds and the eastern wind. And all humanity that loved the
wild, the people who hiked deer trails and stood in awe of the mountains
and seas. The child that lay on her back in a summer meadow
and listened to the quail and woodpeckers. The family that
lived on what the land offered freely all these find their way to
this place after they die.
When a human being passes to this place
they awake to deep indigo skies and sea foam clouds. A falcon
spies them and drops down in welcome. A mountain lion stalks
out of tall grass and calmly places a big paw on their leg. Wild
horses neigh their greeting as they thunder pass and the wolf pack
howls its carol of thanksgiving from the mountainsides to welcome
them finally home.
The human may look for a special friend. An
animal whose place in the wild world strengthened their heart on
earth. And they may go running down a sandy slope to jump into
the sea and find a swimming dolphin or whale. They may look
up and see an eagle hovering above them or grizzly wandering up grumbling
to rub against an old friend.
The Creator gives the lost humans a last
gift, if they wish. They look down one last time at their human form
and it drops away like a memory and they then become the creature
that they love. Then they
run off into the hills, or jungles or seas one at last with the wilderness
they loved. And the Creator whispers to them that they may
return in dreams to the ones still on Earth to show them that they
live still and balance is achieved and spring and sunrise never end
