La Llorona and the Dark Green Religion of Hope

 

 

I recently returned to Maine after what can only be called a harrowing journey from the Southwest. Grateful to feel beloved earth under my feet, I walk along the pine strewn woodland paths to keep myself sane. My animals have been ill, my neighbor was hospitalized briefly, other neighbors deliberately destroyed my garden wall crushing a baby balsam, and used this property as their personal ski slope, the threat of the C/virus looms – there are no words to describe this kind of exhaustion. As a PTSD survivor all my senses are on permanent scream. The simplest task has become monumental. And I am only one of so many…

 

Each day I attempt to feel gratitude for what is good in my life.

 

Momentary peace is found in the Dark Green Religion of Hope that I experience walking under every balsam, lichen, wet leaf, deciduous tree, listening to chickadees, phoebes, juncos, and finches, meandering along the swollen brook – Just to see clear mountain waters rushing to the sea reminds me that Nature’s rhythms are my own, and that most of the time I am not breathing with her – unless I take these walks. Somewhere along the way over these last weeks I have lost access to my body (PTSD).

 

Two days ago we had a spring snow and someone took a picture of me coming up from the brook – I instantly recognized the figure – not as myself but as La Llarona, Weeping Woman.* In the southwest La LLarona haunts the rivers at night. What I didn’t expect was to find her here along the brook, weeping under the bowed evergreens, falling as wet spring snow.

 

All Nature is in mourning for what humans have done to harm the Earth, and now even privileged Americans are under threat.

 

Ll Llorona weeps for us all.

 

Postscript:

Elsewhere on this blog is the story of La Llorona if anyone is interested in the reading… Although I wrote the original article two years ago, ever since this pandemic became real to most, people have been reading this article in numbers that surprise me…