One of my favorite things about hiking is seeing what’s around the next corner. I always say “I’ll just peek around one more bend” then three hours later I’m working my way back having gone much further than intended. It’s a chronic hiking issue and an impossible habit to break. I’ve learned to make sure I have open-ended time for my hikes so I am free to be wayward and wandering. The doggos love it, this need to find new spaces and secret places. They love going off-trail – morphing into the wolves they descend from. Their body language changes, as does their level of focus and awareness of their environment. The same is true for me, skirting glacial erratics, hugging trees as I work my way down an embankment, or following a deep-cut drainage brings out a feral part of me. And I feel completely at home in this space. (The smell of fallen leaves…)
This Fall has had some amazing and unusual moments beyond the autumnal magic I love so deeply. There have been shooting stars, auroras, kayaking with a swimming moose, eagles and being out on the ocean sailing. All of these conspire to tempt me around the next bend in a multitude of ways – creatively, professionally, and devotionally. They all created new spaces with the promise of so much more to explore. Things have started changing rapidly in my life as I move deeper into Cronehood. I embrace this dark wisdom and the strength I find in the shadows. I have lived through much and am still not halfway through it all.
The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”― Carl Sagan
There are parts of my soul that will never heal, losses too profound to quantify. And yet there is newness too, my mind continues to be fluid and open to new ways of seeing and interpreting my life and world as I move through my own timeline. Increasingly, I am drawn away from the chaotic modern world and recede into the forest for critical doses of truth, simplicity, and authenticity. I’m only afraid when I am pulled away from that too much and feel myself becoming withered and bitter without it. There has to be balance, but it is a daily challenge to ensure it. I go wandering as much as I can, especially this time of year, making all the navigational shifts I need to for as much balance as possible. And I know I am not alone in this reclusiveness – I know there are more and more who seek solitude and simplicity, we sense keenly what is missing in modern life, increasingly want no part of it…
I can see the trail, how it winds and curves through beech and birch around the next bend and out of sight. The light is tickling through the changing leaves like stained glass, the wind has a chill in it, fallen leaves drape over stone and root. The sky is a palette of light and dark as the earth prepares to sleep, and it is time to see where this path takes me. Those who have gone before are near, present in wood, wind and stone. Their voices are a susurrus in the blowing leaves and dried grass. Out in the wild, feeling them so near I am comforted…told to be patient…
One day it will be my voice on the wind and in the leaves.
“To light a candle is to cast a shadow.” – Ursula Le Guin
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