Medicin walk resulting in new painting "Reach Out"

Tonight I am sharing a story of spiritual quest with you. 

I´ve started an new painting. This one is the first of three. They are all inspired by a trip I made on my fortieth birthday. As a personal gift for my self, I took a spiritual trip/medicin walk to my favorite forest. In my druid homework, I am working with the element of water, so I made this trip a tribute of that element and all of its aspects. 

I visited three different lakes. This was my second. It is called Store Økssø. I walked all around it, and made the walk a "medicin walk": paying attention to every detail, observing feelings, thoughts and emotions along the way, communicating with the lake and documenting it in my journal. It was very fascinating to see the different spiritual aspects of those lakes. I will share more of it as I paint the other two paintings. 

The water is very brown, but very clean. The reason it is brown, is due to a high content of humic acids. It is impossible for light to penetrate into the deeper layers of the lake, so it is poor on both phytoplankton and higher aquatic plants.

I bathed in it this summer, and I love it! The lake bottom is just rocks and sand. 

This lake had a "mothering" feeling to it. It spoke to me in a way that I had never experienced. The season made the weather a bit cloudy, but it was still nice and warm. I had a picture in my mind of a mothering energy belonging to and protecting the lake. A strong wise woman, a deity of both life and death. I felt the connection and love for her. I saw her standing with a dead bird in her hand. She was the caretaker of all the living things around that lake. She offered me a blueberry, and I felt how it strenghtened me. Just that one very tiny blueberry. The very last one. I couldn´t find any other. 

Her symbols was circles and fish. Her energy moving in circular ways. 

I felt the sensation of a deep silence. She wanted to teach me about that silence, and about taking it more easy, being in the now. I also felt a great love and fellowship with all the pines around the lake. (No, I did not take any halucinative drugs haha)

Walking in silence, a line from a song from the nineties "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode kept playing in my mind. On a medicin walk, every detail is important, so the lyrics from that song was also included in my spiritual quest. The line was just "Reach Out and Touch Faith". Over and over. The same thing happened on my visit to the other water elements that day with different songs. Did you know that I wake up every morning with a nnew song playing in my head? Coming out of the blue? Sometimes it is meaningful and shares a message. Other times it´s just disruptive noise haha

So, all this is coming to life in my painting. Tomorrow is work and school, so I don´t think I will get to paint and share, but Tuesday perhaps. 

Until then, take care. 

Some pictures of the lake that I found on the net: