If you read my books, you know New Seminole founder Busimanolotome Osceola was a complicated man. He had his boots in two worlds. One was the Everglades which he vowed to save by any means necessary. The other was in the "Outside," his word for where you live. Part of that dichotomy of his soul was his love for rock music, especially from the "Golden Age" as he liked to say. One of the songs we'd sing around the ol' campfire was Jefferson Airplane's "Have You Seen The Saucers?" Written by the band's Paul Kantner, it's one of rock's first anthems to Gaia. If you've never heard it before, it's worth a listen and a watch for its over-the-top musicianship. 

I had a dream last night. And it wasn't a lovely dream.

It had an iceberg rushing toward me with the word REPENT! carved out of the ice. I woke up in my bed at the Miccosukee Embassy in Miami-- where I'm doing Sanctuary-- in a cold sweat thinking that it had hit me. I must have said something too because Haalie woke up with me. At first I thought it had something to do with me and Nokosee because we have a lot to repent for but, after catching my breath, I knew the dream was a "wakeup call" to persever in what the NS is doing: trying to save Gaia starting with the Everglades.

Where there are no icebergs and the water is still shallow. 

I know. But it's my dream and I'm sticking to its interpretationoney.

If you read my books, you know, according to my father-in-law, Busimanolotome Osceola, founder of the New Seminole, that it was the screaming of the trees. He said when Nokosee and I got it on we cleared the hammocks of its birds and shook him and the New Seminole out of their sleeping bags. When the complaints started building up, Busi walked up to our tree and yelled up at us to cut it out, that no one could sleep. At first we jumped, nearly falling out of the tree. But then we laughed. Busi sighed, sadly shook his head, turned and walked away muttering something to himself in Muskogee. 

Sorry. But when nature calls, nature calls. 

Nokosee and I joke that Haalie, our little girl, was conceived in the trees, probably a gumbo limbo, our go-to tree for lovemaking because of its strong branches and its tendency not to sway-- although banyan trees are more fun because of their swaying , catapulting is no fun and hard on the ass and head (I have been knocked bonkers more than once in a banyan, a tree I started climbing and wasting away my summer days as a child).  

Well, enough on our arboreal lovemaking, let's talk "forest bathing" which brought me to this post-- via a fond memory or two. Wink, wink. 

Forest Bathing is a Japanese thing (Shinrin-Yoku). It's basically a walk in the woods while paying attention to what you see (mindfulness)-- instead of thinking about how you're going to pay your taxes or, as in our case, how you're going to avoid confronting big bad Uncle Sam one more day. 

But I digress. I believe everyone should take a walk in the woods as Thoreau suggested about a hundred-and-sixty years ago (“I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees”). Bill Bryson appropriated that line for the title of his best-selling book and later movie starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte. And I'm here to tell you that it works. A little more meandering through a forest is a great way to renew the spirit-- as long as you come out the other side ready to fight for Gaia. Otherwise, it's just another form of self indulgence. 

Teen Vogue will launch in March a zine called Unquiet. Emma González, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting survivor-- and one of our favorite people right up there with Greta-- is the Editor-in-Chief. 

"The stakes are too high for us to be silent," she writes. "If we don’t speak up, we risk losing our future. To shape the world, we have to tell our stories.
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We are here. We are UNQUIET."

​To learn more, please click the link above.