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

Sep 16, 2013 Awake in Real Time: Coffee-induced Meditations and Journal Entries, Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes

… except that it was lovely for me and my daughter, yesterday in the woods near our house.  Here’s what happened (as I narrated it on FB):

Daughter and I took a long, two-hour walk in the Fells this evening — we got quite lost after a while, and were quite thrilled with our adventure. When we first entered the woods, we ran into an old student of mine from my first year of teaching. (Nice to have seen you today, Andrew!) Then, we went on, saw places in the woods we’d never seen before, huffed up hills and slid breathlessly down slopes, skidding on rocks, and stepping on heavenly piles of pine needles, lichen and moss, along the way. The hum of traffic receded and almost disappeared. A very mild anxiety set in when we could NOT find the main path, despite following many likely trails. I was sanguine, however. I knew I’d find my way out. Then, after a couple of inquiries I made to a passing jogger who had an i-Phone, and could check his map, we headed down a likely path. Just as the sound of traffic swelled, and the road came into view, a rabbit bounded out of the trees and sat in the brush, its dark, inscrutable eye gazing at us in profile. That was a pretty culmination to our sojourn in, and return from, the woods. Then, we reached the road with a sigh of relief, came home, had pizza and fruit and watched Red Dwarf, Episode I, Series I, and Red Dwarf, Series 3, Episode 5. Nice day!

 

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

Tags: #Mother and Daughter, finding one's way, getting lost, the path less travelled, walk in the woods