It requires five minutes to acclimate to the rain, to push through that point of icky discomfort. Running in the woods, an indistinguishable mix of a human and earth; we’re both perspiring, both saturated. I enter a cave of now: attentive, excited, where energy, focus, and will redirect to the moment. The opposite of the chair and screen.
Flooded by strategy and content calendars… These are sedatives: calming, addictive, transporting the mind into tomorrow, tricking it into ignoring today. The chair and screen are great at generating yawns.
Instead of all, everything, all the time, and the flurry of too much content, a run in the woods is the now; rain, sweat, birds, leaves, deer flies, and bramble scrapes are one. If there is an opposite of a yawn, achievable in a few steps from the front door, this is it.
Choice, calculation, overthink. An incremental drift away from a goal, from a call…
Artificial re-creation of an intelligence that’s already here.
A sensory orchestra. The rain? The maestro. It softens my steps, refilling ponds so the frogs can play. When the downpour stops, a harmony between owl and wood thrush begins. After this crescendo, in one opening of the forest canopy, the dark green chlorophyll-packed leaves serve as a frame for the next movement. With just a 180-degree swivel of my head, the sky turns from an onyx-black-blue to clear; a full spectrum of color-light mixing inexplicably, yet easily. Its texture.
In this cave or camp or hunt. Lost, cold, struggling, then purpose. A spark that lights the fire, that signals the orchestra. Less yawns, more unknowns.
Making the call of nature incredibly enticing with this one.
Jesse, your writing is the reading equivalent of touching grass, and I’m pulled toward it every time you publish. Grateful for the way your work meets a quiet need, again and again.