Samsara Symbiotic

Life led the tender girl, last breathing, into a verdant wood. This forest had been her escape from “the real world” since early childhood, safe amongst the strong scent of pine and detritus. Here, she felt safe.

Soft, peridot hued mosses provided a cushioned carpet for her to lightly walk across. Her steps were delicate and measured, as those of a dancer.

Carefully she sought her path, through fallen fir and brave birch. As she walked, her extended, open palm connected with every tree she passed. Bark was a delight. Some slick, some cragged, some rough, some smooth. This space was a living, breathing, textural museum.

Here, time is timeless. Freedom and wonder lift her spirit high. She reveled in how lucky she was to be a part of something as magical as this. The August air carried with it a sense of wildness. Something neither heard, seen, nor smelled. Something deeply, primordially felt. A vesper of so many intangibilities that hid amongst the truths of nature.

Late afternoon found the girl at the edge of a clearing, surrounded by old growth woods that had seen it all. Strong sun warmed her soft skin. The chickadees chattered and chitted, flitting about, deep inside a barberry bush.

She stood, silently enchanted- her focus, a doe. The dainty, almond-eyed creature stood alone in the clearing, nibbling shoots off of sapling trees. The girl was enamored. Suddenly, the deer tensed, gaze shooting upward, meeting the similarly large, clear, brown eyes of the girl. In that instant, the bullet chose it’s target.

The doe, cottony white tail held high, bounded back into the safety of the thicket. The hunter saw only the running doe, not the fallen girl, and so he moved on.

She felt herself dying. It was an oddly welcome feeling, it did not come with pain. Sun kept her from chilling as she passed. As she lay waning, it crossed her mind, that she would’ve rather died nowhere else. Death took her slowly, lapping at her soul like the waves upon an eternal beach. Her discorporation was mercifully sweet.

Dead bodies do not last long in a humid summer wood. First, she would become a grotesquely twisted bloat. Upon detection by native saprophytes, the process of degradation and decay would begin.

She would become truly a part of the place she loved the most.

Humidity met autolysis with open air. First the insects, drawn by the sickly scent of oncoming putrefaction. To them, it couldn’t have smelled any more attractive. They nibble bits of skin- and dine heartily on seeping post mortem fluids. The initial clean-up crew.

Then came the larger scavengers. Raccoons tore pieces from her wet-paper skin, and secreted them back to hungry kits. Turkey vultures all but stripped bare her young bones. Every vital organ provides life for the birds and their young. They are thorough. Upon leaving their meal fleshless, a flock of full-bellied birds fly back to roost.

Many days and nights had passed since the girl had gone missing.

Search parties had been deployed, but the thick, brushy forest was a master at keeping secrets. The girl would never be found.

Skeletonization invited the fungus and molds to take over. Wrapping her graceful sculpture of bones in a living mycelial gown. The ground surrounding her body was alive with new growth, spurred by the nitrogen released as she decayed. Gentle mushrooms spored upon her nutrient rich, porous bones, creating future generations of fungi.

Then, one day, there was simply nothing left. The girl’s corpse had been completely subsumed by her beloved forest, and she would forever remain a force of growth and protection inside it.

If there was a good way to die- a good place to die- this sad, beautiful girl had been given both blessings