Oct 13, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Teaching and Learning

My Walk in the Woods — The Non-Bryson, Non-Thoreau Edition
©By Vijaya Sundaram
October 13th, 2013

Today, we walked in the woods, my daughter and I.

It was quiet.  My daughter and I talked quietly, and only occasionally.  The sun slanted down, flowing quietly through sun-veined leaves.  Pine needles cushioned our footfall.  Birds, mostly unseen, occasionally glimpsed, sang or chirped quietly.  Far away, as in a dream, the traffic made itself heard, a hum from another world. 

No rabbits bounded across our path.  No deer gazed at us in consternation.  There was nary a coyote, nary a fox, nary a snake and nary a scary beast.  I was, when I think back, half-disappointed, but mostly happy.  The trees were company enough for us.  And they whispered as we passed, sending messages down their root systems. We tripped on some of those root systems.   Radical messages flowed from them to other trees.  The path was non-contrived.  There were leaves, roots, stones, pine-needles.  It was a path, nevertheless.

At some point, like Frost, we reached a fork, many forks.  Unlike Frost, we clung to the one most travelled by. After all, these weren’t our usual woods.  These were new woods, in a nearby town, near the zoo we liked to visit on weekends.  These woods spelled mystery.  Mystery likes to wait.  No need to be in a rush to unpack everything all at once.  Besides, there might not be anything, just the ever-present low-level hum of humorous anxiety about the prospect of being lost, even if only for a while.

In my world, courage lies in simple things.  I shall never be a mountain-climber, a channel-crosser, a sailor, a lion-tamer, a sky-jumper, a person who is jailed for standing up for the rights of the oppressed, or even a person who simply quits if the situation is distasteful (although I’d like to be many of those things). 

For now, I just want the courage to put one foot in front of the other, in the years of my life that are yet to come, and face my future with a quiet assuredness, and know that although I might have been afraid at some points, I never stopped. 

I want that for me, and I want that for my daughter. I want to teach her courage in the face of her fears. I want her to know when to advance and when to retreat. I want her to know which cause is worth fighting for, and which ones are lost ones.

And how can I teach her these things, if I am afraid to find out?

One of these days, however, I shall take that fork that leads to who know where. I shall take it alone, I hope, and I shall return, stolen fire in my heart.

And I shall pray that the gods will not be jealous.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags: Courage, facing life, keeping children company, meditations, ordinary living, walk in the woods