Walking Through a Forest Requires a Full Mind

A short story:

Where do I go from here? A question I repeat to myself many times during this walk. “Where do I go from here?” as if the question itself will reveal an answer to me. A person who receives a spark of creativity to then create a world within a thought or a symphony from a single mental melody may feel the same. I walked a very long time really, and I truly believe that my many times asking “Where do I go from here” has brought me to being lost, now. Out of the many times I have asked this question, I truly do not know where to go.

Now it may seem curious as to why I am in this predicament, and you are right to think this, as it is an uncommon thing to blindly walk into a forest and lose yourself. I think there was a part of my mind that wanted to be lost, and I had the sense of that subconscious thought egging me on, influencing the decision to go by instinct each time I made the mental note “Where do I go from here?”.

The feeling of lost that I have at this moment is one I have never felt. I have come close in my personal life to feeling this way, of sitting on the edge of societal failure looking into the abyss that will consume me and form me into an undesirable to the world, with nothing to show my value to the society that bleeds us dry. That type of lost is one that cannot be escaped. In my own life I am quite comfortable now and happy where I sit, my value sits comfortably within myself, and I make enough to get by. One must question why we hold such an importance to be seen as valuable to a person who may only see you once in their life and you see yourself all the time. I try my best to push myself away from this train of thought and hope that one day I can have control over this obsession with being seen. This is beside the point however. I am lost. The sun shining through the green leaves and the rush of insects chirping is calming. The twigs and dirt crunching beneath my feet to me is satisfying. The birds are flying through the trees and calling one another to perhaps mate and continue their circle of life. I am lost among a world that breathes in a different way than the world I am used to. I am lost in a world that I might like being lost in.

This really started as a walk through my favourite nature reserve after a week that was not the best for me. I am not saying that it was a devastating week, it was more that part of adult life where everything was just too much. Our world of phantom currency, owned by people who will never breathe or feel, one whose cells are made of business degrees and nepotism can be something that one would like to run from. Sometimes I need to escape this world of imagined barriers and gossip and be in a world that is easier to wrap my mind around. I like being lost in this world, because I truly am not lost, there are no locations in this place, no buildings, no directions. There are trees and there are lakes and at some point, if I walked long enough, I’d find a sea. I know if I spoke to most people about this, they would know I’d be living in a fantasy regarding my assumption of this place but in this moment, in my world at this very moment. I know this to be true. I am lost in a world that doesn’t need me to be a part of it, I am lost in a space that is meant to move despite me instead of needing me to subjugate.

I think of the roots in the ground that connect this collaborative metropolis of living things. The trees feed the ground and speak to each other while providing home to insects, animals and birds, and as I walk through and smell the soil, and the foliage around me, I wonder how I myself could emulate at least a fraction of the impact of a tree. I enjoy my solitary moments, it feels as though I need them to get through the insanity of the half-imagined world that we have all grown up in, but we as well do live in a collaborative environment. How can I be the living thing that supports and is strong for other people and myself, how can I provide a confident presence or at least a semblance of comfort. I should be like trees, we should all be like trees. A bird’s call responds to my thoughts as if agreeing with this statement in my head. I decide that birds are psychic.

Now, I could live in this place forever, the sun is powerful and feeds me with positivity, the animals are my friends, and at this exact moment is when truly I realize I may have been out here too long. The sad things about fantasy thoughts are that fantasy thoughts most of the time are far from being realistic. Sometimes I fantasize about owning a house, and that is something I may never experience in my lifetime. I fantasize about being very successful in my career and that is something that is next to impossible, but there is something I feel when thinking these things which creates a peace and allows me to go on to hold off the hurricane from absorbing my conscience. This hurricane that overshadows all that I do. This walk is my problems going away for however long I need them to be gone. The sky is going orange and I check my watch to see that it is getting to sundown, I turn and begin my long walk back to the car and hopefully I get back before dark. This world will not miss me or even recognize that for a split second in its entire existence I was an unimportant spectator of its splendor. This walk is something I needed.