By Megan-Mack Nicholson

Guest Columnist

I’m the director for a wilderness school that mainly serves high school students as they navigate that precarious and tender time of one’s life. It’s a full-on type of gig and I often leave after a long stint in the woods to visit our family camp. 

“Camp” is located on the utmost western tip of a long, narrow body of water. When the weather is windy, it feels as the brunt of the storm is against the shoreline. Camp is where I find myself this gorgeous yet windy afternoon. The trees are bowing, and the white caps tell me that taking out the canoe would not create the peaceful evening I am hoping to enjoy. 

Peace these days seems to be a yearning for homeostasis of the mind, body and spirit. It’s interesting that we just went pass the fall equinox because an equinox is a time we experience nearly equal light and dark— the ultimate yin and yang, the times when Earth finds balance and its own homeostasis. It seems to me that more people honor the two Solstice times, the times of utmost darkness and of most radiant light. I wonder if we, as humans, are drawn toward the dramatic? Does the dramatic direct us to find our center of calm again? Said differently, is the calamity necessary to appreciate the calm?

Michael Singer, a popular spiritual teacher, has this brilliant podcast where he talks about our thoughts being like ripples of interference, keeping us from our true nature of peaceful living within a peaceful mind. He uses the analogy of wind on water and I look out at this churning lake and I know the lake’s natural tendency is to be still. With no wind or weather, the water’s surface would be smooth and glasslike. I reflect upon the students I work with and how they come to me in such extreme states of being, like the solstice. They come stormy — full of thoughts that keep them from their truth — and together we head into nature, take long hikes, canoe waters, and take notice of how everything in nature is cyclical. Nature’s today may be stormy, but tomorrow calm. I look to nature to help teach them and then I realize: they are exactly the same as nature. Sometimes, these students present like the winter solstice, mostly dark and cold. Other times, they present like the summer solstice, super bright and ecstatic. During their time of reflection in nature, most find themselves settling into a healthier emotional balance. Perhaps, the answer to truly helping my students another find inner peace and calm is to safely offer a place to storm and find homeostasis again. 

For some reason, this year has brought a new, and deeper sense of honoring the peaceful calm of the Equinoxes. What beautiful times of year to reflect and prepare for what inevitably comes next. Maybe after more than a year of our whole lives being upended, we are all trying to find our center of peace and calm again. 

Megan-Mack Nicholson is Director of the Hyde Wilderness School and founder of Holon Healing. She has her M.S. degree in Environmental Science and Outdoor Leadership, is a certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide, Shamanic-Reiki Master Practitioner and Registered Maine Guide. Holonhealingme@gmail.com