The Forest Remembers

Love Does Not Decay. It Ascends.

CRAIG STEVEN GORDON

At the edge of dawn, the forest was still — not silent, but listening. The air was cold and damp, filled with the scent of leaves returning to earth. Every rustle, every faint creak of branch seemed aware, as if holding its breath for something sacred.

I had come searching for my brother. Not in sorrow, but in communion — to find where his spirit had folded itself into the living world.

The path had changed since I last visited. Fallen trees reshaped the familiar; moss deepened over stones; roots pressed up through the trail like veins of memory. I wandered, whispering inwardly, Craig, guide me.

And then, quietly, he did.

I found the spot — his stone hidden beneath a thick quilt of oak and beech leaves. The forest, breathing its autumn hymn, had tucked him in. Kneeling, I brushed the leaves away, each motion a prayer. They crackled softly, releasing that sweet scent of decay and life intertwined. Beneath them, the raw earth appeared — dark soil streaked with red clay, the color of creation itself.

Unlike the manicured lawns of cemeteries, where grass is clipped and grief is tamed, this earth is unrestrained. It breathes. It stains. It welcomes the hand. Here, the divine is not polished into symmetry but revealed in its wild, fertile disorder.

As I cleared the grave, I noticed something new — delicate white pine seedlings rising from the mound. Their silvery-green needles reached toward the sky with quiet determination. The Tree of Peace, I thought — its roots spreading in all directions, offering shelter to all. Here, on Craig’s grave, those roots were beginning to take hold.

I felt a stillness settle through me — as though the forest itself was showing me the shape of his afterlife. His essence had become part of the forest’s renewal — embodied in the needles, the mycelium, and the damp pulse of the earth.

Cemeteries conceal this truth beneath neatness; the forest reveals it. Death is not an ending — it’s the soil’s awakening. Each fallen leaf, each decaying stem, each tear that darkens the clay — all of it feeds the miracle.

My brother’s stone read:

CRAIG S. GORDON - Mar 9, 1960 – Nov 1, 2023 - Photographer. One Love.

A perfect epitaph. He saw beauty everywhere, and now beauty sees through him. Upon the stone lay small painted rocks — offerings of love — and scattered about were tiny mushrooms that stood like candles, their caps glowing in shades of clay and ember. One, the color of autumn fire, fanned open like a flower — as if the forest itself had kindled a flame in his honor.

As the dawn light shifted, two deer stepped silently from the trees. They paused, then bowed their heads. The forest, the deer, the soil, my brother, and I — all part of one vast breath.

My tears tumbled into the clay. The soil received them. It felt less like mourning and more like participation — water to roots, salt to memory.

In this forest, I understood what sacred ground truly means. Not trimmed lawns and polished markers, but living earth that claims nothing and welcomes everything. Here, the divine does not descend; it rises — from the soil, from the silence, from the luminous work of transformation.

Craig’s journey continues — not away from this world, but deeper into the vastness that holds it.

His bones may rest here, but his soul has never been bound to clay. The forest is only the first threshold — a doorway between realms. In its quiet breath, I feel the echo of his release: the unbinding of form, the widening of spirit.

He has traveled beyond the canopy, carried on unseen currents of light. The forest hums with traces of his passing, yet his path stretches farther — through the calm corridors between lives, where spirit gathers its strength before taking form again.

I sense him in that realm of preparation — where the soul reviews what it has learned and chooses what will come next. Perhaps he is already shaping his next beginning, deciding which lessons to carry forward, which bonds to renew, which joys still wait to be lived.

And I feel, as I have always known, that our bond was never only of blood. Blood made us brothers once, but something older binds us still — a current that runs deeper than lineage. It is the soul-line, not the bloodline, that calls us back to one another through time. We have met before, and when the season returns, we will meet again — perhaps not as brothers, but as souls that remember.

The forest mirrors this truth but does not contain it. Its roots hold the memory of his rest; its sky, the promise of his return. Every trembling leaf feels like a quiet message, a pulse of reassurance from just beyond sight.

When I kneel here, I do not speak to the ground but to the vastness — to that steady current that hums through all things, where Craig now travels in the great remembering. He is not bound to one place but moves within the rhythm of return, carried by love that neither fades nor forgets.

He has become the forest’s memory — and its messenger. The forest remembers him through me, and I remember him through the wind, the stars, and the living silence between.

And in that stillness, I felt a whisper rise — not from grief, but from hope:

Love does not decay. It ascends.

And in that rising, I know — my brother continues his journey among the stars, preparing for the dawn of his next beginning. And when he returns, whether as stranger or kin, my soul will know him again.