Autumn Hiking
Today I went on a hike. That sounds simple, right? You put on some sturdy shoes, head to the woods, and walk around for a bit, huffing and puffing your way through nature.
I suppose I did all of that (except I do not huff and puff, thankyouverymuch), but the hike was so much more than that. So much more complex. Of course, I WOULD make hiking into some type of metaphor, or catharsis, or whathaveyou.
The hike brought immediately before me all the reasons I was strangling in Utah. The climate was odd, the season changes weren't as vivid and beautiful, the plant life was different, even the sky looked different. Here, I just fit. I can sit on a bench by a waterfall, overlooking an autumnally-bronzing mountain chain, and I can breathe in the stillness, and the oneness, and the sense of something grander and divine -- and I can feel, finally, at peace.
All of the small miracles I have witnessed unfolding before my eyes these past few weeks have spoken to me of the rightness of my being here, of my return homeward. Do you know, I had never felt déjà vu before in my life? I had déjà vu-like symptoms, but all that meant were that synapses were misfiring in my brain and it was time for me to go to bed. Three times in the last month, however, I've had the prickly sense of rightness, of I've-done-this-before-ness wash over me; maybe I'm only just becoming the right person at the right time in the right place.
Pity it's taken me twenty-one years to get here. But it's a joy that I've made it at all, as I'm sure some never do.
I suppose I did all of that (except I do not huff and puff, thankyouverymuch), but the hike was so much more than that. So much more complex. Of course, I WOULD make hiking into some type of metaphor, or catharsis, or whathaveyou.
The hike brought immediately before me all the reasons I was strangling in Utah. The climate was odd, the season changes weren't as vivid and beautiful, the plant life was different, even the sky looked different. Here, I just fit. I can sit on a bench by a waterfall, overlooking an autumnally-bronzing mountain chain, and I can breathe in the stillness, and the oneness, and the sense of something grander and divine -- and I can feel, finally, at peace.
All of the small miracles I have witnessed unfolding before my eyes these past few weeks have spoken to me of the rightness of my being here, of my return homeward. Do you know, I had never felt déjà vu before in my life? I had déjà vu-like symptoms, but all that meant were that synapses were misfiring in my brain and it was time for me to go to bed. Three times in the last month, however, I've had the prickly sense of rightness, of I've-done-this-before-ness wash over me; maybe I'm only just becoming the right person at the right time in the right place.
Pity it's taken me twenty-one years to get here. But it's a joy that I've made it at all, as I'm sure some never do.
posted by juxtaposer at 8:36 PM
4 Comments:
Who did you get to carry you on this hike, or do you just do that to your old Dad? :-)
Not everyone will let me hit them with sticks like you did.
I have always wondered how you got hold of those sticks. I suspect it was an inside job. Hmmm, your Mother is suspect #1.
It certainly sounds like her. She taught me where you kept your paychecks, too, don't let her fool you.
Post a Comment
<< Home