Today, I lost the path... And I said to myself while hiking through this self imposed situation, "When you leave the warn path, you are in new territory that is exhilarating and scary, independent of whether it was deliberate or accidental. You feel lost. You stumble over rock and river, wondering if somebody has been here before. Did they get lost too? Did they leave you clues to get somewhere that keeps you alive? You get anxious about the darkness that looms in the near future, you make jokes, and laugh into the deep forest as you misstep, stumble, and slip. You fall on your ass and slide backwards grabbing onto what seems stable. You start regretting this choice to forge into unknown territory. You search for a way back to what is known. And if you stay determined and perhaps have a bit of skill and a whole hell of alot of stupid luck, sometimes you find yourself safely back where you began, a bit dirty and tired from the travels, and slightly disappointed you didn't end up somewhere new and exciting. Do you want to try again? It is later in time, the world did not wait, and you feel out of step. It all looks changed although you know it is the same. Is that good or bad? Does all of this just not matter? You have been lost, dealt with heightened emotions, and yet you are back where you started... and yet again you feel different. You have gone all that distance to have gone nowhere. And yet when you start reviewing what has happened, you realize that you have experienced something unexplainable. You are happy, ecstatic to still be alive. You have new stories to tell. It will be a challenge to express this ambiguously wonderful thing that has happened to you without explaining away the wonder or being dogmatic about how to deal with what you have been through. You search for a truthful way to share your story, a story that is yours and therefore inherently unique to your own experiencing of it, yet somehow communal. You want to be surprised when you discover people can apply this story to themselves, to feel as if it is there own. You want it to add to there own perspective, to make them feel they have thought about something differently than they expected. You want it to give them pause for thought."
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