Walking Off the Beaten Path

Every morning Normand and/or I take Zak our almost 2 yrs young german shepherd for a long walk either along Devil's road near our house that leads to a 4x4 trail through the forest or through our neighbors beautiful land of forest and open fields. I thrive on variety so I mix it up and discover new trails whenever I can. This morning alone with Zak I decided to take a turn off the trail into the forest after the orchard. I headed towards an abandoned house looking cabin (apparently once used for contraband) and continued further deep into the forest. I knew I would eventually end up either on a small trail I know well or at the tall barbed fence surrounding  the experimental farm. With that in mind I enjoyed looking around the new ground I was discovering, including a huge tree at least 200 years old, one of the rare of its generation around these parts. I eventually met up the path I recognized and continued towards the experimental farm. On the way back looking around for mushrooms I somehow got lost and no where near the path as I had walked far off. I started looking around for visual signs of where I was, either the hunting cabins in the trees, the open space behind the trees where the field is, or any other known visual, but nothing looked familiar. It's impossible for me to get lost as there are parameters I recognize within a radius of 5 km, eventually I would reach one that would indicate my position. However in that moment, I trust for the purpose of my expressing what I was ready to; I was immersed in the feeling of being where I had never been before and not trusting that it was good and fine. I was acutely aware of how my need to know where I was, was obscuring the beauty of the moment not allowing me to fully see the new ground I was treading. I was constantly looking further away at where I came from or where I was headed, instead of where I was. I could clearly feel the parallel in my life and the anguish I had caused myself during the times I was living this metaphor i.e. caught up in the fear of not knowing where I was, not trusting I would be ok. It was evident that all the times I was so bent on trying to frame my life according to known values and familiar concepts that I had missed out on the excitement of the bountiful variants that lay before me as their shapes and colors were so different from what I thought life ought to be. My life did not flow in the predestined paths I had set out for myself from which I often felt exhausted trying to swim towards as it was against the strong currents of the life force leading me away, towards river beds I did not know existed. Feelings of failure become too familiar whilst trying too hard to fit the acceptable parameters of what life should be and look like onto what it really is. Wasted opportunities to see the real beauty and the real success. How depleting it was for my inner radar to be constantly scanning in circles for the only frequencies it was programmed to pick up, missing all the others that lay eager to be acknowledged and discovered! This walk felt so vividly explicit an expression of my soul, sadly regretting all the moments of my life I had wasted being fraught with fear when walking off the beaten path. I don't know anyone that walks or has ever walked the path I do, regardless of my constant doubt it's obviously the right path for me.