The spring waters come rushing down the mountain brook. The sound drowns out even my thoughts. Its source rises up from the depths, beneath the earth’s crust on top of this mountain I love on, an unassuming spring pool in the forest easily missed in a glance.

The water builds tempo with each turn on its path. It appears to want to get to the ocean. But who can know. Perhaps it has no wants. Perhaps it wants the unnameable, the indescribable. Meanwhile, I watch and listen.

The clear water travels down the mossy granite slough, spilling into an emerald pool waiting there—a container of stillness—a birth canal opening itself to life. In the pool, the water’s surface reflects blue sky, cloud and bare tree limb. All that movement, all that energy, drops and gathers here. The pool is four feet deep and twice as wide, collecting stillness. Beneath the surface, it is perfectly still to its depth.

As the pool fills, it finally spills out and down again, around and over the rocks in the path, on to the sea—eventually down to the sea, where all waters gather. The earth’s waters travel on their own natural path. And, in the pools of stillness, before moving, it waits, collecting itself, integrating, holding loosely to what comes in without cause or plan. There seems to be no forward momentum here, just an organic gathering of nature’s forces, until it moves on the intelligent path with the least resistance.

Jen Deraspe, owner of Nurture Through Nature, is a holistic retreat facilitator and practitioner of The Work of Byron Katie. She lives off the grid on Pleasant Mountain in Denmark, Maine. www.ntnreats.com, (207) 452-2929.