--I kept going...
This is we're we paused yesterday.
Where the path closed
down and over,
through the scumbled leaves,
fallen branches,
through the knotted catbrier,
I kept going....
This 'manway' my friends and I were hiking on Saturday was a delight to discover. And the place it finally would take us is spectacular. But the finding of this particular path had been a long and sometimes frustrating process. When I was first exploring the area years ago, I got lost a lot.
Of course, getting lost a lot teaches us a lot about where the path does not go. One time I persisted in a direction that put me in a laurel hell. A laurel hell is the name locals use for massive thickets of laurel and rhododendron.
Very often, at the edge of a laurel hell, you see something that looks like an arch, a path, a kind of tunnel through their tangled trunks and branches. The reason it's called a 'hell' is because these tunnels usually lead deeper into the thicket--and then close in again. And since you've already invested effort in getting where you are, and since you're headed in the general direction you want to go, you keep going--either crawling under the tangled branches or slowly snaking over and through them like a contortionist.
Then you find something else that seems to be a way through, another arching tunnel. Ah, thank God, you think--I can stop crawling and contorting. Then that tunnel peters out too--now deeper into the 'hell.'
I'm grateful for these experiences. I've learned a lot about my stubbornness, which is often unhelpful to myself and others. And I've learned a lot about curiosity--which, though it sometimes fuels stubbornness, is of itself a lovely form of energy. I'm glad to repent of stubbornness. I don't repent of curiosity.
I can remember my mom, every time somebody said, 'Curiosity killed the cat,' replying, 'And satisfaction brought him back!'
Mary Oliver's poem continues,
I kept going. Finally
I could not
save my arms
from thorns; soon
the mosquitoes
smelled me, hot
and wounded, and came
wheeling and whining.
And that's how I came
to the edge of the pond...
Curiosity keeps us moving forward, exploring life. And when we're curious about the deep places of life, when we're curious about what really matters, when we keep exploring even as the mosquitoes come 'wheeling and whining,' eventually we often come 'to the edge of the pond.'
