The newly risen red sun rode the horizon with purpose. Gone was the night as well as a sleep. We awakened out of our beds with excitement, for we were going to go hiking with our friends at Santa Rosa Plateau before the sun gets too hot. We prepare ourselves by getting dressed in hiking clothes and shoes. We make tea and breakfast treats to bring along with us. There is something reverent about this ritual, although we are going to a place of worship. There is something pure about going into creation, that we do not find in the routine of the day, when we ignore a great deal of His creation around us. We are stripped of our every day and walk into the universal.
Landscape Of The Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve, Murrieta, Riverside County, California, United States

We arrive at the Plateau. The morning greets us. The dew is still there within the trees and within the grass.  Everything is bathed in golden light, and the dew looks like tinsel upon the leaves, and jewels within the grass. The park is filled with gnarled oak trees and the fields are filled with wild flowers of every kind imaginable. There are small white flowers that make it seem like the fields are filled with patches of snow. There are small pink flowers that look like they belong within a small child's dollhouse.

There is purple vetch and purple lupines that stretch out of the land near gray stones, and poppies that shoot out of the green fields with their bright orange color.

The fields are lush, luxurious and, green. Something that you would imagine in some fairy garden. A song comes to mind, as I hum softly to myself - Yusef Islam "Morning has Broken"

Mine is the sunlight

Mine is the morning

Born of the one light

Eden saw play

Praise with elation

Praise every morning

God's recreation

Of the new day

A few weeks ago, this land was dead. The grass was yellow and completely dried out. The oak tree was listless. The air was still and cold. The stream was completely diminished It seemed like  Nothing could come out of this barren wasteland.

There was no hope that it would ever recover. Do we ever feel like this, in our ordinary every day life, that some circumstances in our lives remain unchangeable? That these days are like the winters of our lives. with out hope. Our lives are so dried out, like the land., because we refuse to believe all the miracle that is around us. We remain unaware. We feel abandoned. But did not Allah say this in our darkest hour, as He told Prophet Muhammad:

By the Glorious Morning Light, 

And by the Night when it is still,

Thy Guardian-Lord hath not forsaken thee, nor is He displeased. 

And verily the Hereafter will be better for thee than the present. (Quran 93:1- 4)

In nature, we return to ourselves again.  Will He not makes us alive again. He sent the rain to revive the fields and the forest. Does He not revive us here on earth? Does He not revive us in the hereafter?

We walk within corridors of these flowers...and the tall grass. We walk through stone passages. We praise Allah in every step that we take. We find a small bench that is placed where we can view the stream. We hear its rushing sound. We can hear the wind rustling through the trees. We can hear the birds chirping and the sound of small frogs. From a distance, we can see a deer watching us, behind a tree. We open up our backpacks, and bring out our thermoses and drink our tea, and share the sweets that we have brought with us. There is a great deal of bond between us. We feel spiritually cleansed to be in this place. We do not think of the problems that we have at home. Allah says that everywhere on earth is a mosque, There is something holy to be out in nature.

We face every day the artificial and the complexity of our lives. Here we are our true selves, we can not be fake, We can not be others than ourselves.

Do they not look at the sky above them?

How We have made it

and adorned it,

and there are no flaws in it? 

And the earth

We have spread it out,

and set thereon mountains standing firm,

and produced therein every kind of beautiful growth (in pairs)

To be observed

and commemorated by every devotee turning (to God). 

And We send down from the sky

rain charted with blessing,

and We produce therewith

gardens and Grain for harvests; 

And tall (and stately) palm-trees,

with shoots of fruit-stalks,

piled one over another

As sustenance for (God's) Servants

and We give (new) life therewith

to land that is dead: Thus will be the Resurrection. (Quran 50: 6 - 11)

We feel one with the nature around us. We start to head back, and walk through sylvan pastures. At one side we see a coyote running in a distance. On our other side we see three deers grazing. We can see blue, snow covered mountains in the distance.

Soon we begin to see the houses on hills as we are coming out, and we begin to forget what we just experienced, to go on into the ordinary happenings of a routine day. We start thinking about our lives outside our walk, and feel disconnected. If only we could carry this awareness and feelings through everything that we do. If only we could learn to be grateful for all that Allah has given us, and carry it through our every day life.

By: S. Bushra Khan - MuslimBridges

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