The trouble began at the public beach where my leashed, and consequently grouchy, dog did not like the other dogs running amok around him, and my two year old granddaughter, dressed to the nines in her Baby Gap beachwear, coveted all the brightly colored plastic toys strewn about the man-made sand bar.

As she trotted purposefully toward a handsome blow-up alligator, she turned frequently to point a tiny but authoritative finger at  me (lurking and following) to holler ‘Sit, Grandma. Stay!’

She knew from experience that I would take it away from her because it wasn’t hers.

Earlier, in a secluded location, I had been watching her play with a lilypad that had floated to shore and it struck me as remarkable that she could find such a variety of games to play with it that her complete attention was focused on it for 30 minutes or more.

Pebbles and other small objects floated in her lily pad boat. She cavorted in the shallows naked except for her lily pad hat and absorbed lily pad medicine as she rubbed her lily pad washcloth across the skin of her belly. Eventually she smashed it to pieces as she ruthlessly stomped it into the mud at the shore line.

In the meantime, after first expertly stripping and swallowing the antibiotic laden lichen that covered a broken tree branch, my unleashed dog was wholeheartedly engaged in the act of retrieving it from the deep, cold water  that I repeatedly consigned it to. He was the epitome of uninhibited joy – tireless, in-the-moment joy evoked by engaging in a simple activity with a convenient plaything from nature in the presence of his pack.

It was a remarkably cheap, spa-like rejuvenation for all three of us.

We inhaled the healing essential oils of the fir & cedar trees around us while our winter deprived skin hastily synthesized Vitamin D in the flooding patches of sun.

Just like the misted fresh produce in the grocery store, we cooled and re-hydrated our bodies in the moisture exhaled by the leaves of the living forest around us.

Our senses were calmed by the scent of the warmed earth & the sight of Canada geese parents introducing their tiny chicks to their birth place.

There was nowhere else we had to be and there was nothing else we would rather be doing. Our souls were nourished by the contentment that comes with a sense of belonging and a life that feels right.

My teachers told me that there are really only two reasons for human disease.

Some people are unhappy with their lives but too afraid to make the necessary changes and others have become so disconnected from nature that they have lost the sense of belonging and the ability to judge whether or not they are living the right life.

In Pemberton, all we have to do to ground ourselves is to walk out our doors into the forest and let Mother Earth work her healing magic.

I don’t think community life gets much better than this for raising healthy children and living out our lives in good health and contentment.