Brimming with love, and bliss sits a little closer by
Busy as I was at Trail Days this weekend, I only took the time to write down the two sentences that sum up my weekend anyway:
I'd forgotten the love.
How much more it is than what I've known.
This is an easy statement to misunderstand. I do not wish to undermine other love, from my family to my older friends. The "more" is not that it's better, but that it is expressed, intact, without the interruption of insecurity, embarrassment, or sexual innuendo- well, mostly, on that last one.
When I attempt to explain the difference between town life and trail life to my dear ones who have known only the former, I tend to fail. Because I've built up the latter to be this other dimension, operating free of certain rules that we take for granted as easily as gravity. And yes, I've talked about it in terms of another dimension, as Narnia- and it is using this analogy that is striking or disturbing, because this world of ours in the woods is not the stuff of myth: indeed, its reality makes it more potent. However the myth makes it inaccessible, as it should be. There is still an otherness we cannot put our finger on, trail family.
In school I studied socialization and the impulses, processes, and incentives that make behavior, and the utility of rules and praxis that bind a culture. Needless to say, then, the culture of life in the woods remains fascinating, inviting of analysis. There can be no real vacuum for humanity, but as a control, the woods come closer than a lab. Except the control is no control, it is advantaged with what E.O. Wilson called biophilia, the "innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other organisms," and the reason we as a species, as animals, find peace in nature. So my struggle to treasure the trail and live in town is abstract: my division of these two arenas, two methods of lifestyle I have experienced, is unnecessary.
Reading those lines again, I realized how the sentiment, written in bliss and gratitude, could cause others hurt- they are not belonging, they are less than. I considered an entry without inclusion, merely referring to the words. Then I understood: it is not the quality of the love, but the channel and delivery. For example, I know my parents better than all my trail family, yet that does not make the sentences false. When they visited me on the trail, the channel, the delivery of expression was unimpeded. That's the difference then- my reflex to dull what I want to convey (saying 'love ya!' instead of "I love you dearly" or holding back on a compliment) is assuming honesty makes me vulnerable; a reflex that is either abandoned at the outset or washed away with the passing of every blaze. Did I ever tell my friends every time I saw them how much I cared for them and why I treasured them in my life? No. Does my trail family? Yes. Now I do, and now I try to make that a part of this town life.
It seems there's a lot of stuff going on all the time. But there really isn't. And letting go makes room for bliss to settle down close by, so that as I sit here, looking out the window to a green meadow, where a Japanese maple with its brilliant plummy leaves stands offset to the kiwi-colored wall of leafy oaks behind it, and the plummy branches move in concert with the lush kiwi branches, sharing the breeze and moving like arms waving, I am brimming with gratitude, love, and blissful, because I had forgotten how to wash away the stuff that interrupts the honesty. And I am able to wave back sincerely.
I'd forgotten the love.
How much more it is than what I've known.
This is an easy statement to misunderstand. I do not wish to undermine other love, from my family to my older friends. The "more" is not that it's better, but that it is expressed, intact, without the interruption of insecurity, embarrassment, or sexual innuendo- well, mostly, on that last one.
When I attempt to explain the difference between town life and trail life to my dear ones who have known only the former, I tend to fail. Because I've built up the latter to be this other dimension, operating free of certain rules that we take for granted as easily as gravity. And yes, I've talked about it in terms of another dimension, as Narnia- and it is using this analogy that is striking or disturbing, because this world of ours in the woods is not the stuff of myth: indeed, its reality makes it more potent. However the myth makes it inaccessible, as it should be. There is still an otherness we cannot put our finger on, trail family.
In school I studied socialization and the impulses, processes, and incentives that make behavior, and the utility of rules and praxis that bind a culture. Needless to say, then, the culture of life in the woods remains fascinating, inviting of analysis. There can be no real vacuum for humanity, but as a control, the woods come closer than a lab. Except the control is no control, it is advantaged with what E.O. Wilson called biophilia, the "innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other organisms," and the reason we as a species, as animals, find peace in nature. So my struggle to treasure the trail and live in town is abstract: my division of these two arenas, two methods of lifestyle I have experienced, is unnecessary.
Reading those lines again, I realized how the sentiment, written in bliss and gratitude, could cause others hurt- they are not belonging, they are less than. I considered an entry without inclusion, merely referring to the words. Then I understood: it is not the quality of the love, but the channel and delivery. For example, I know my parents better than all my trail family, yet that does not make the sentences false. When they visited me on the trail, the channel, the delivery of expression was unimpeded. That's the difference then- my reflex to dull what I want to convey (saying 'love ya!' instead of "I love you dearly" or holding back on a compliment) is assuming honesty makes me vulnerable; a reflex that is either abandoned at the outset or washed away with the passing of every blaze. Did I ever tell my friends every time I saw them how much I cared for them and why I treasured them in my life? No. Does my trail family? Yes. Now I do, and now I try to make that a part of this town life.
It seems there's a lot of stuff going on all the time. But there really isn't. And letting go makes room for bliss to settle down close by, so that as I sit here, looking out the window to a green meadow, where a Japanese maple with its brilliant plummy leaves stands offset to the kiwi-colored wall of leafy oaks behind it, and the plummy branches move in concert with the lush kiwi branches, sharing the breeze and moving like arms waving, I am brimming with gratitude, love, and blissful, because I had forgotten how to wash away the stuff that interrupts the honesty. And I am able to wave back sincerely.
posted by Sara Haxby at
2:42 PM
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