Just Being

I went for a walk in the woods on Sunday. Not an uncommon occurrence I grant you, but this was different. I was ALONE.

It was late when my husband decided to drive a 40 mile round trip to my Grandparents house for some bits of Plexiglas my Grandpa had saved for him, and later still by the time he realised that the children really were coming along for the ride and he could do nothing to stop them.

The mountains of things requiring my attention were there. The paperwork, the laundry, the supper, the sewing...all there waiting for me. And I was tired, so tired, from several broken nights with unsettled children with bugs.

So I decided to go for a walk. Actually I just decided to go to the woods, and accept the walking as a by product.

It was beautiful. More than beautiful. It had been a clear cold late Autumn day and it slowly turned into a misty still Autumn twilight.

I walked, and stopped, and listened. I saw how the holy berries looked as though someone had painted them in scarlet gloss, like the staging for a Christmas photo shoot, but not for my benefit. I saw how the mist rose above the meanderings of the river, giving the whole valley an eerie and otherworldly quality, but that was only my interpretation. And it occurred to me there, in the silence and stillness that I am unaccustomed to in my boy filled world, that I love the wood, but the wood cares not one little bit for my affections.

It just is.

If a tree falls in the forest it matters not whether there is any one there to hear it. It's noises are not for us.

And small fish in big ponds and large fish in small ponds feel no more or less important and give no thought to the size of their pond and the relative dimensions of their own fish body.

They just are.

It is only us humans who attribute layer upon layer of meaning to everything, and it felt wonderful in the dusk and mist to just be, just for the briefest of moments, before heading back to meaning.