The Oak Letter
The Sacred Glade
July 2026
Letters from an ongoing relationship with the living world.
I thought I knew this field.
Several times a week, I walk the back field. This day was no different. Just an ordinary walk, on an ordinary day—like the thousands of others I’ve taken here over the last 20 years.
The familiar, well-trodden path stretched wide before me. But today, something moved me. From somewhere deep within, beneath my thinking self, there was a tug. My feet, obedient only to themselves, responded and turned right, off the main path, onto a narrow deer trail that crossed the centre of the field.
Instead of circling the edges of this space, I was headed into its centre, empty except for a few oaks surrounded by bramble and scrub.
The trail that chose me took me straight toward this centre thicket.
Yes, I had seen it before from a distance, but had discounted it as impenetrable and uninteresting. These thorny thickets are common here. It’s nature’s way of protecting the young oaklings from hungry deer.
And so I walked, in the sunshine and the breeze, expecting not much.
When I reached the thicket, as if from nowhere, a hidden opening appeared. It was as if someone had crafted a natural doorway in the bramble. This doorway lead into a circular clearing — a glade where three mature oaks stand present together.
Stepping into the glade was like stepping off a noisy, city street into the quiet reverence of a cathedral.
I didn’t know if this feeling came from the trees. Or if it was because, from inside the glade, the rest of the field disappeared. Or if it was simply the presence of the land in that spot. I didn’t care. I simply stood still and felt it around me, and within me.
How could something so special and profound be hidden in plain sight?
How had something so extraordinary been waiting for me for so long?
Perhaps I had failed to pay enough attention. Perhaps I was unobservant?
I reached out to a friend who born and raised in Windsor. She told me stories about how she played in these fields as a child. I know that she now walks them as regularly as I do. Even with her more-than-forty decades of knowing this place, she, too, had not discovered the glade.
I wondered some more.
How much more is waiting for each of us, just on the edges of what we notice in our day-to-day lives?
How much more is waiting to be discovered? To be uncovered? To be seen? And to be received?
How much more of what we seek, and what we crave, isn’t missing at all, but simply waiting for us to reconnect?
Today was like any other. I didn’t think the field had become more extraordinary. And yet, my relationship with it had changed. Suddenly, I could see what previously had been hidden.
Had something changed in the field?
Or had something changed in me?
Had I begun seeing differently?
Had I finally become quiet enough to notice?
Or had I finally stopped walking through the landscape…
and started belonging to it?
The more time I spend with these ancient oaks, the less I think they're teaching me about trees.
They are teaching me about relationship.
Beginning with my relationship to myself:
How I am a part of the living world.
How I am in, and with, all the experiences of my life.
I realised I was no longer visiting these fields.
I belonged here.
Not because they belonged to me.
But because I belonged to them. As part of them.
I wonder if one of the quiet tragedies of modern life is that we've forgotten what that feels like to belong.
Perhaps that's why the greatest possible life discoveries aren't places or things.
They're relationships that have been patiently waiting for us to re-discover them.
Perhaps belonging is simply remembering that we are already participating in one ongoing act of relationship.
The oaks are not simply trees "over there."
They are participants in the same living system that includes birds, fungi, soil, weather, deer, insects, and us.
We, too, belong to all of this.
The hidden oak circle reminds me that reality is always larger than what is in our current map.
There is always more available than we can presently see.
Possibility exists alongside us, on the edges of what we notice, and know.
The mystery, and the invitation, lies in our willingness to walk to that edge, and stand there long enough to listen.
Imagine what would shift and become possible, if we were committed to living this way
I don't yet know why those three trees revealed themselves when they did.
I don't know why I hadn't seen them before.
I don't know what they'll continue to teach me.
But I have a feeling this hidden glade marks the beginning of a new conversation.
Where in your own life might something extraordinary be hidden in plain sight?
Until next month….
Denise
A week after discovering the glade, I wrote these words….
The Sacred Glade
Hidden in plain sight
in the middle of the back field
that I have walked for twenty years,
I discover a circular glade
holding three majestic oaks.
I thought I knew this field.
I know where the daisies grow in summer,
and how the mud gets deep in winter.
I know the rhythm of this place:
that the daffodils bloom
before the oaks unfurl.
And that the caw and call
of its jackdaws, kites and parakeets
are as familiar as my own voice.
Here I watch oak skeletons return,
limb by limb
back to the ongoing vitality
that sustains life itself.
Not only their life
but the existence that is alive
in us all.
On this day
something turns my feet
toward an unknown path
and I cross the centre field.
There I find the oaks
surrounded by scrub,
hidden in a tangle
of bramble and thorn.
And within that thicket,
A camouflaged opening
to a living circle.
Beneath the canopy dome
soaring skyward,
I stand still
in the soft grass,
feeling our earth’s music
flowing through light
and vibration.
Inside my own being
I feel its heartbeat
cascading like thunder
threaded with starlight.
In this secret space
where these three oaks stand,
my heart lifts
and joins their perpetual prayer.
Thank you for being here.
Continue the conversation
If this letter resonated with you, you may enjoy exploring the ideas behind it.
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