Shadows

When shadows attack the best thing I can do is go look for bigger shadows and I don’t know of a better place than the woods.

The park is closer, but there is something primal about more isolated areas away from traffic and people that is healing for me.

The sheer size of the trees puts me in my place.  No matter how big I may feel, I am one of the smaller things around out there.

The paths offer me countless ways to go, each one uniquely ready to teach me something if I pay attention.  The shapes, the colors, the patterns!  The movement, the composition, the scents!  When I open myself to all of this my perspective begins to heal.  

It is all up to me: which way to go, how fast, even to move or not to move.  Every breath becomes conscious if I stand still and allow myself to simply absorb what is all around me.  And then, after a while, there is nothing – I am like all the other things standing there, existing there.  I just am.

Today the animals were all big and fat and fluffy, getting ready for winter.  A big-eyed cottontail watched me from under a tangle of bushes.  Squirrels scampered out of my path and up the bare naked bones of trees whose last leaves hung on like some people do, long after there is a reason.  A huge buck with a full rack startled and leaped into the air. The doe with him turned too, but she lingered long enough for me to pull out my camera.  I wondered why.

I meandered up hill and down; taking pictures, getting lost and then finding myself and finally following the sun back towards the western gate where my car was parked.  By that time shadows were long, but they were all in perspective.  None weighed me down.

I drove home relaxed and at peace.