I was about to get up from my short little lunch stop but then I took of my shoes and began to listen to the waterfall behind me and the stream in front of me. And so now I sit. As if pacing like there was something on my mind. There is a thought of a mountain lion lunging at my neck, but looking over just now I see a chickadee. It isn’t making its sound, perhaps allowing me this quiet space between the falls and the stream. I have plans to get my shoes on quickly while grabbing one of my trekking poles if a lion shows. Odds are if I can start petting it before it starts biting me I’ll be in good shape.
What is on my mind? In this silent what is it that might shape my mind anew?
Mostly I know how to say what I’m thinking but perhaps in this moment: away, rested, loved, a little chilly-as I think about summiting this mountain I’m thinking directionally. At this trail junction I can go four different directions and I’m going to choose one. That singular chioce will bring about all sorts of pain, awareness and beauty spiraling together into an orientation- a way- a direction.
In some ways though my chioce was made a while ago with that first step in entering the woods. On a bald a few miles back after coming up an unblazed trail I set my eyes on a distance rocky summit and thought, “this boy will glimpse the view on the other side of those white rocks.” I think I thought it in a deep epic kind of voice too. There was intensity and passion and resolve you could cut with a butterknife, anchored in a sun burnt brow that is now looking over his shoulder again praying not to see a mountain lion.
A while back at the first gap I hit, something struck me. Something that sorts out this fear and furry-not to talk it away with words but to give it a framework. As I was looking down from the gap I noticed the road to the trail-head. In my line of sight the ridge trail, as it dropped off out of sight, had nearly aligned itself with the road that was miles below it. As if offering to meet the road by way of it’s ridges. Then I thought as much as we believe avoidance of our deepest fears is a way of functioning in the world it is actually a way of functioning in two worlds. I find myself in the woods with legitimate fears as I do in town. The lions manifest in a multiplicity of ways. And I come here to escape but find my thinking simply changed all to often. Its like God is saying from the soil to the concrete… walk these hills in such a way, knowing deep in your being that your already free in these cities and trees.
