The Invitation
The Invitation is what it feels like when somewhere finally says, "Come in."
It was quite early in the walk when I saw this. A path bending gently into a tunnel of tree ferns, their fronds reaching overhead and closing the light into something soft and contained. I hadn't yet found my rhythm. I was still carrying the weight I'd arrived with, a year that had tested me more than I had expected, and a quiet uncertainty about whether I still had the capacity to do what I had come here to do. And the forest offered this. Not a grand entrance, not a view, not a destination. Just a path, and the quiet assurance that following it was safe.
There is a particular kind of relief in that. When something larger than yourself simply makes space and says you are welcome here. Not because you have earned it, or because you have resolved the difficult thing, or because you are ready. Simply because you have arrived.
The Invitation begins the Rainforest Reverie collection because it holds the first gesture the forest made toward me. And it holds what I hope this work makes possible for the person who lives with it: the repeated experience of being welcomed somewhere that asks nothing of you except to be present.
When you look at this piece on a difficult day, the path is still bending into something you cannot fully see. That is not a promise of resolution. It is an invitation to keep going.
