As I walked along, I felt every single step on the soft earth. I smelled pine and stopped to stare at the huge thick trunks of the trees before me. How long had these trees been here? 20 years? 100 years? I could not say for sure, but they looked like great guardians of the earth. They'd been through storms, rain, wind, drought, birds had built their homes in their branches. They'd been pecked by woodpeckers who left deep welts, like battle scars on their trunks. They'd been infested with bugs and some of them had lost their branches, but the roots and trunks were still standing strong.
I need to go to the forest to remind myself to be like a tree. Winds of change can be fierce at times and the tendency is to blow all over the place. Sometimes it's easy to blow so far from where we're meant to go that we're no longer sure who we are.
I have the tendency to want to roam when what I really need to do is ground. I think part to that is a fear of looking deeply at my life. I fear the mundane and I also have a fear of settling.
If I have any free time, I want to travel. However, this will be the first break from teaching where I will not go far from my home. I have a plan to hunker down, clear out the old, organize, write, garden, create a budget and make my home a haven.
This does not mean that I will not travel again. I know travel is in my future for sure, but I'm feeling the need to ground before I take off because eventually I will need to land again and what good is flying around if I can't land. I think it's a skill worth mastering and even being good at.
So I'm getting my lessons from the trees and the earth right now. I don't need to go far to do this. I can start right where I am.
Do you have trouble grounding yourself or are you are very grounded person who could use a bit more adventure and spontaneity in your life?
