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Hey, it's Eric. Before we begin tonight's episode, just a quick reminder. You're about to hear a few ads that help to support Listen to Sleep. If you'd rather drift off without them, you can join Listen to Sleep plus and get every episode ad free plus bonus stories and meditations. Just go to ListenToSleep.com and click on Support to learn more.

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Hello friends. Welcome back to Listen to Sleep. This week I saw a video on YouTube by Oregon Public Broadcasting called Guardian of the Land. I'll link to it in the show Notes. It's about how the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest consider what we call Bigfoot to be a protector. And it got me wondering about the protectors in my own life and what a protector is really protecting. Tonight's story is called the Remembering and it's about an old man named Walter, who moves to the forest seeking peace. But as many of us discover, you can't run away from yourself. Your worries, your anxieties, your restless mind, they can follow you wherever you go. What Walter doesn't know yet is that the forest has been waiting for him. That something ancient and patient has been paying attention. Not to fix him, not to save him from anything, but to remind him of something he forgot a long time ago. This is a story about curiosity, about wonder, about the protectors in our lives that don't guard us from danger, but remind us we're already whole. It's a story about waking up, not to something new, but to what's been true all along. So just let yourself drift as we walk with Walter through the seasons, letting the words wash over you. You don't need to follow every detail or remember every moment. Just let the story carry you into sleep. Your only job tonight is to rest. Creating Listen to sleep really is a big part of my life's work, and your support makes such a huge difference. If these episodes help you find a little peace, I would be so grateful if you'd consider joining Listen to Sleep plus for less than a latte each month, you'll get AD free episodes with no interruptions, plus extended recordings that I don't release anywhere else. You can join@listentosleep.com support or now you can subscribe directly in Apple Podcasts where you can also get a seven day free trial. Thank you so much for your support. Let's take a deep breath in and out. Letting go of the day, feeling the weight of gravity pulling you deep down into the mattress. Another deep breath in and nothing to do. Nowhere to go, no one to be. This is your time. Quiet time. One more deep breath in and out. If you get tired while I'm reading to you, that's okay. Just let yourself drift off the remembering. Walter is 68 years old and he has lived in the forest for a little over five years now. Five years of tall oaks and firs surrounding his small clearing. Five years of the creek running behind his cabin, its voice changing yet constant through every season. Five years of waking up to bird calls and falling asleep to wind in the branches. He came here seeking peace. That's what he told people when he left his life in the city. The job that had consumed 40 years, the house that felt too large after his spouse passed, the neighborhood where everyone knew him but no one really saw him. He came to the forest because he thought silence would be better than noise, solitude better than the exhausting performance of being okay. But the peace he imagined hasn't arrived. The anxieties followed him here, packed themselves into his boxes without asking permission. Every morning at 6, Walter makes his coffee. The same amount of grounds, the same temperature water, the same mug he's used for years. He drinks it standing at the kitchen window and his mind begins its familiar routine. Worrying about money, about whether his savings will last, about his health, about the choices he's made, about time running out. After coffee, there are chores. Splitting wood, checking the water pump, sweeping the porch. He keeps everything orderly, controlled. Then lunch at noon. Always something simple, efficient. Then his walk. Exactly 45 minutes on the same trail that loops from his cabin up to the ridge, down to the creek and back. He times it. He counts his steps some days making sure he's staying active, staying healthy, staying disciplined. Dinner at 5, reading until 8. Always nonfiction. Something practical or historical. Never stories, never anything that requires imagination. Bed at 9. The forest exists around him like wallpaper, pretty but separate. He notices it the way you notice furniture. It's there, it serves its purpose. But he doesn't really see it. The trees are trees. The birds are birds. The creek is the creek. There's scenery for his routine, background to his thoughts. When he walks, he doesn't hear the individual sounds. The rustle of the squirrel, the knock of the woodpecker, the whisper of wind through different types of needles. It all blends into white noise behind the constant narration in his head. Did I turn off the stove? Should I sell the cabin and move closer to town? What if I fall and no one finds me? Was it foolish to come here? Am I wasting what's left? Sometimes, rarely, a memory surfaces from childhood. He remembers being eight years old, reading about Bigfoot, about forest spirits, about the mysteries that lived in these wild places. He remembers believing in those things with his whole heart. Feeling wonder instead of worry. Seeing magic instead of just matter. But that was childhood. That was before he learned to be serious, rational, realistic. Before he understood that believing in things you can't prove is embarrassing, childish. His adult mind is proud of its skepticism, its logic, its refusal to indulge in fantasy. And yet he's lonely. The cabin is quiet, but it's not peaceful. His mind is busy, but he's not engaged. He's surrounded by forest, but he feels separate from everything. As if he's living behind glass, watching life happen somewhere else, to someone else. At night, lying in bed, waiting for sleep Walter sometimes wonders what he actually came here for, what he thought he'd find. The question makes him tired in a way that has nothing to do with his body. Outside his window, the forest breathes in darkness. The trees stand in their ancient patience. The creek moves over stones. It has been shaping for thousands of years. An owl calls from somewhere deep in the canopy, and another answers, but Walter doesn't hear it. His mind is already running tomorrow's list. Firewood to stack, a hinge to oil. That book he should finish. He pulls the blanket up to his chin and closes his eyes. And the forest goes on without him, vast and alive and waiting. And then it happens. On a Thursday evening in early winter, just as the light is fading to that particular blue that comes before dark. Walter is standing on his porch, about to go inside for dinner, when he hears it. A sound, not loud but resonant, deep. It moves through the forest like a voice, but not quite a voice. Like a call, but not quite a call, low and sustained, coming from somewhere in the trees to the north, and it raises every hair on his arms. His body responds before his mind can interfere. His breath catches, his attention sharpens, his senses suddenly vivid. For three seconds, maybe four, he's completely present, completely listening, his entire being oriented toward that sound. Then his mind steps in, firm and dismissive. Don't be ridiculous. It's nothing, just wind. Through a hollow tree or an owl you didn't recognize. Don't be childish. He goes inside, makes his dinner, tries to read, but the sound stays with him. That night he dreams of walking through the forest as a child, unafraid, following something he couldn't see but trusted completely. The next morning, his routine feels slightly wrong, like a shirt that doesn't quite fit right anymore. His coffee tastes the same, but he finds himself standing at the window, longer than usual, looking into the trees. On his afternoon walk, he notices something odd. There's a place where three branches have fallen across each other near the trail. Large branches, not twigs, arranged in a way that seems almost intentional, like a marker, like an X. His skeptical mind immediately provides explanations. Wind. Or they fell at different times and just happened to land that way. Or a bear knocked them down. It's nothing. But he stops. He looks at them for a full minute, and something in his chest tingles, not with fear, but with something he can't quite name. Curiosity, maybe, or the faintest echo of wonder. He keeps walking, but he thinks about those branches all evening. Over the next two weeks, there are other things, small things, easy to dismiss. A stack of stones by the creek he doesn't remember seeing before. Five stones balanced carefully on top of Each other. Hikers, his mind says. Someone was here, and stacked stones. People do that. A path through the snow that circles his cabin, staying about 50 yards out, never coming closer. The tracks are large but unclear. Could be a bear. Could be something else. Obviously a bear, his mind insists. That sound again one early morning when he's making coffee. Farther away this time, but still unmistakable. The same resonance, the same quality that doesn't fit into any category he knows. And this time his body's response is even stronger. His heart speeds up, his skin tingles, and underneath the fear there's something else, something that feels almost like recognition. But he shuts it down, shuts it down hard. I'm being foolish, he says aloud to his empty cabin. I'm too old for fairy tales. He decides to be more rigorous with his routine. He sets his alarm 15 minutes earlier. He makes his walks shorter and faster. No more standing around looking at branch arrangements or stone stacks. He reads only the driest history he can find. Nothing that might encourage imagination. But the forest won't let him hide. One afternoon he's splitting wood behind the cabin when he feels it, that sense of being watched. Not threateningly, more like attention, like awareness. Like something in the forest is paying attention to him in the way he might pay attention to a bird at his feeder. He spins around, scanning the tree line, his heart pounding. Nothing. Just trees. Just shadows. Just the ordinary forest. But the feeling doesn't leave. And when he goes inside, his hands are shaking. That night he barely sleeps. His mind keeps arguing with itself. There's nothing out there. You're being irrational. This is what happens when people live too long. They start seeing patterns that aren't there, inventing mysteries to fill the boredom. But another part of him, a part that sounds younger, asks quietly, what if you're wrong? What if there's something you're missing? He rolls over, pulls the pillow over his head, and tries to force himself to sleep. Outside, the forest continues its conversation. Branches creaking, owls calling, the creek moving its eternal water over ancient stones. And somewhere in the darkness, patient and unhurried, something waits. The shift begins on a morning in late winter when Walter breaks his routine without planning to. He wakes at the usual time, makes his coffee the usual way, and stands at his window the way he has every morning for five years. But this time, instead of drinking quickly and moving on to chores, he stays. He stands there, coffee cooling in his hands, and he actually looks. The frost has caught on every branch and needle of the oaks and firs, and the rising sun is turning it all gold. Not just the trees. Every blade of grass. In his clearing, every surface has become intricate with ice crystals. The world is practicing geometry, repeating its patterns in infinite variation. And it's astonishingly beautiful. Walter blinks. When did he last notice something beautiful? After his coffee, he doesn't start his chores. Instead, he puts on his coat and walks outside with no plan, no route, no timer. His body seems to know where it wants to go. Not his usual trail, but north, toward where he heard that sound. He walks slowly, so slowly, stopping every few yards to actually see what's around him. Here, a spider web strung between two branches, still holding drops of melted frost that catch the light like diamonds. Here, three different types of moss growing on one tree trunk, each with its own texture, its own shade of green. Here, claw marks on a pine tree. High up, a bear teaching its cubs to climb. Probably months ago, but the story is still written in the bark. Walter reaches out and touches the marks, and something in his chest releases just slightly. He keeps walking, and his mind keeps trying to reassert control. What are you doing? You're wasting time. You should be working on something productive. But the thoughts are quieter now, easier to let drift past. He comes to a small clearing he's never noticed before, though he must have walked past it dozens of times. In the center, there's a flat boulder, sun warmed and inviting. He sits down. And for the first time in years, decades, Walter simply sits in the forest, without an agenda. At first, his mind races through its usual routines. But gradually the forest's patience begins to teach him. The trees aren't in a hurry. The creek isn't rushing toward some goal. The chickadees moving through the branches are completely absorbed in their task of finding food. Not worried about yesterday or tomorrow. He begins to hear individual sounds instead of noise. The tap, tap, tap of a woodpecker. The rustle of a squirrel harvesting pine cones. The creak of trees swaying. The gentle sound of moving water. And underneath it all, something else. A quality of aliveness. The forest isn't just scenery. It's aware, attentive, present. Walter sits on that boulder for over an hour. When he finally stands, his legs are stiff, but his mind is quiet in a way it hasn't been in years. The next morning, he returns to the boulder. And the next. It becomes part of his routine. But not the rigid kind. More like a rhythm, something his body wants to do rather than something he's forcing himself through. He begins to recognize individual trees. That Douglas fir with the split trunk. That young bay reaching for the light, that old growth cedar with the hollow at its base. They stop being generic trees and become presences, personalities, almost each one unique. He learns the patterns of the birds. The Steller's jays that visit his clearing every morning around 9. The Ravens that fly over at dusk, their calls echoing off the ridges. The wrens that nest in the woodpile. He stops wearing his watch. Time becomes something different. Not hours and minutes, but light and shadow, temperature and sound. Morning, when the frost melts. Afternoon, when the sun reaches his clearing. Evening, when the owls wake. One day, sitting perfectly still on his boulder, Walter watches a fox hunt in the meadow below. The fox moves with absolute focus, listening for gophers under the grass, then leaping straight up and diving down with its front paws. It catches something, eats it, and then looks directly at Walter. They regard each other for a long moment, the old man and the fox, and something passes between them. Not thoughts, more like recognition, like, oh, you're here too. You're part of this as well. The fox trots off, and Walter realizes he's weeping. Not sad tears, something else. Something that feels like ice melting, like a thaw that's been needed for a very long time. His anxious thoughts still come. What if you run out of money? What if you get sick? What if? What if? What if? But there's more space around them now. He can watch them arrive like weather, watch them pass like clouds, without believing they're the whole sky. And sometimes, sitting on his boulder in the early morning, he feels it again. That sense of being noticed, of attention being paid to him not by anything he can see or name, but by the forest itself, by the web of awareness that connects everything here. And it doesn't frighten him anymore. It feels like being held. On the first truly warm night of spring, Walter's intuition births an intention. He's going to stay outside all night, not camping with a tent and sleeping bag, but sitting vigil beside a fire in his clearing. Awake, present meeting the forest in its darkness. He doesn't know why this feels necessary. He just knows it does. He builds his fire as the sun sets, using the good dry wood he's been saving. He brings out his chair, a blanket, a thermos of tea. He's not afraid, exactly, but there's nervousness humming in his body. The forest at night is a completely different world. As darkness settles, the visual world fades and the auditory world expands. The sounds he knows from daylight, the birds, the squirrels are replaced by other voices. Owls calling and answering across the ridges. The rustle of things moving through the undergrowth. Mice probably, or voles, but he can't see them, so they become mysterious again. The creaking and groaning of trees settling into night. The fire makes its own sounds. The snap of pitch pockets, the whisper of flames consuming wood, the shift and fall of coals. Walter sits and listens, and gradually his eyes adjust until he can see again. Not colors, but shapes and movements. The silvered trunks of the firs, the darkness between trees that's darker still. The faint glow of the creek reflecting starlight. Around midnight, his anxieties arrive in force. All the fears he's been holding at arm's length come crowding in. You're going to die out here alone. No one will find you. For weeks. You wasted your life. You never figured out how to be happy. You ran away instead of facing things. You're irrelevant now. You don't matter. The thoughts are vicious, relentless. His heart pounds, his breath gets shallow. But he doesn't go inside. He stays in his chair, feeds another log to the fire. Breathes. Just breathes. And slowly, so slowly the panic begins to ease. Not because the thoughts go away, but because he realizes what they are. Just thoughts, just weather, just the mind doing what minds do. He's not his thoughts. He feels more like the space they're happening in. The realization is so simple and so profound that he laughs out loud and the sound echoes across his clearing into the dark forest. Around two in the morning, in the deepest dark, before dawn, Walter hears it again. That sounds closer than ever, coming from the trees just beyond the reach of firelight, low and resonant, unmistakable, moving through the forest like a voice in a dream. His body goes electric, every nerve alert, every sense heightened. But he's not afraid. Not anymore. He stands up slowly, leaves the circle of firelight and walks to the edge of his clearing. The sound doesn't repeat, but he can feel something there. A presence, massive and patient, just beyond where he can see. His rational mind tries one last time. There's nothing there. You're imagining things. But his body knows better. His body has always known better. Hello, walter says quietly into the darkness. Thank you for being patient with me. He doesn't expect an answer he doesn't need, because he understands now. The sounds, the signs, the sense of being watched, none of it was about proving anything exists out there. It was about waking him up, about calling him back to wonder, to curiosity, to presence. The forest has been trying to remind him. You are not separate. You are not alone. You are part of all this. And all this is part of you. The presence of whatever it is moves away through the trees. Walter can hear it going, Branches swishing, something large moving with surprising quiet. He returns to his fire and sits back down. And the tears come again. But this time he knows what they are. Gratitude. Relief. The end of a long, long exhaustion. He doesn't need to see whatever it is, doesn't need proof or evidence or validation. He just needed to remember how to be awake, how to be here, how to feel his belonging in the world. The fire burns down to coals as the eastern sky begins to lighten, first to charcoal, then to silver, then to that pale blue that comes just before sunrise. Walter is still waiting there, wrapped in his blanket, when the first birds begin their dawn chorus. He's tired in his body, but something else in him is rested for the first time in decades. The old Walter, the anxious one, the controlling one. The one who thought he needed to escape or achieve or prove or perfect that Walter died in the night. What remains is simpler. A man sitting by a fire, watching the dawn being exactly where he is. Summer settles into the forest with its long light and deep green. Walter's days have changed completely, though from the outside they might look almost the same. He still makes his coffee every morning, still tends his garden, still walks the trails. But everything is different now because he's different. He's stopped trying to control his mind. The anxious thoughts still come. He's human, after all, and minds do what minds do. But he doesn't fight them anymore. They arise like birds flying through his awareness, and they leave the same way. Sometimes he even greets them. Oh, there's the worry about money again. Hello, old friend. His walks have no agenda now. Some days he goes for hours, following deer paths he's never explored. Other days he sits on his boulder for 20 minutes and calls it enough. He's learning to trust his body's wisdom about what it needs. The forest has become his teacher, his companion, his church. Every day it shows him something new. How the light filters differently through different densities of canopy. How the trail smells different depending on the temperature and humidity. How the squirrels have distinct territories and specific voices. How the creek's sound changes as the water level drops. Through summer, he's begun leaving his own small offerings. A bowl of water at the base of the old oak for birds and insects. Seeds scattered for the ground feeders. Small rocks along the trails. Not to mark anything, just to say someone has been here. Someone is paying attention. You are not alone. Occasionally, hikers pass through. They're always slightly surprised to find Someone living this far back, and Walter waves from his porch, offers water, and asks how their journey is going. He doesn't tell them what he's learned. You can't tell people this. They have to remember it themselves. But sometimes, standing in his clearing, they pause and look around with something like wonder. It's so peaceful here, they say. The forest does that, walter replies. One young woman stops on the trail, and he can see she's been crying. She sits on the log by his garden, and he brings her water, and they sit in silence for a while. I don't know why, she finally says, but I feel safe here. Walter smiles. You are safe. You always have been. Sometimes we just need reminding. She doesn't understand what he means, but something in her softens anyway. She drinks the water, thanks him, and continues her hike with lighter steps. After she leaves, Walter sits on his porch and realizes he's become a part of the web of protection he felt that night by the fire. Not because he's doing anything special, not because he has answers or wisdom to dispense, but simply because he's present, because he stopped running from himself, because he's remembered his belonging, the same way that sound, that presence in the forest, held space for him to wake up. He can hold space for others now, just by being there, just by being at peace with what is. One evening in late summer, Walter stands on his porch at dusk, the same spot where he first heard that call almost a year ago. The light is fading to that particular blue that comes before dark. The air smells of pine resin and dry grass, and he hears it again, that sound, low and resonant, moving through the forest like a voice in a dream. This time without thinking, Walter responds. Not with words, not even with the same sound he couldn't make it if he tried, but with his own voice, a wordless call that comes from somewhere deeper than thought, somewhere older than language. And the forest answers. The wind picks up, moving through the trees and waves. The ravens call from the ridge. The creek seems to rush louder, everything responding, everything in conversation. Walter understands now. The protector he felt wasn't something separate from him, trying to teach him from outside. The protector was his own deeper nature, his own true self calling him home. The forest was just helping him remember everything that happened, the sounds, the signs, the sense of being watched was the universe showing him to himself, not as a separate, anxious, never enough self that needs fixing or protecting or perfecting, but as a part of the whole living world, already complete, already belonging, already home. The child who believed in Bigfoot wasn't wrong. The adult who stopped believing wasn't wrong either. They were both just stages of remembering and forgetting and remembering again. And now, at 68, standing on his porch in the wild forest, Walter has remembered. He doesn't know what will come next. He doesn't need to know. Each day arrives perfect and complete, asking only that he show up for it, pay attention to it, meet it with curiosity instead of control. The mountains will continue rising into evening light. The creek will continue its ancient work of shaping stone. The trees will stand in their patient knowing. The mysterious things that move through darkness will continue their rounds. And Walter will be here, part of it all, awake to his belonging, finally at peace. Not because he figured everything out or achieved some special state or proved anything to anyone, but because he stopped running, because he remembered how to be curious. Because he let the forest teach him what he'd forgotten. That he was never separate, never alone, never anything but a temporary expression of the same aliveness that breathes through everything. He sits down on his porch steps and the stars begin appearing one by one in the darkening sky. And somewhere in the forest, that sound echoes one more time, faint now distant, like a farewell or a blessing. Walter closes his eyes and smiles. He's home. He's always been home. He just needed the forest to remind him. Good night.