days pass, and i feel calmer as i try to learn what it means to settle in. it strikes me as incredibly strange that i am living a life where i can watch a chili plant grow on my windowsill.
on saturday, we (natalie, courtney, tiffany, and i) drove up to 9500 feet and hiked a beautiful beautiful trail that was seven or eight miles long. i think that there's some good and healthy shift that takes place inside of me when i get out into the quiet air (almost too high for birds) and spend all day walking. i mean, i love walking, but i'm usually walking to somewhere. i usually have some idea of what my destination looks like. in this case, it turned out to look like the pretty stream that we sat down beside at lunchtime. our destination turned out to be wildflowers and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches and the sound of the brook talking. but we didn't know that when we set out. we hadn't even planned to hike that trail. and i'm still not entirely sure that we were on the trail that we thought we were on. but i think we got to the right place. (a lot of days are like that, after all: you start out with one destination in mind, but by the grace of God you don't get there.)
we talked through the first half of our hike, pointing out pretty things, taking photos, hearing stories of the nepalese people, singing silly songs and generally doing whatever we could do to make each other laugh. (we do a good job at this. but then, we all seem jump at the chance to laugh.) we helped each other across streams and out of the path of meese, and we caught tiffany up on all of the major plot points she may have missed over the past month (and a lot of extremely minor plot points as well, to be sure). when we got to what seemed like the end, we sat down by the water and took our shoes off, stuck our feet in the stream, started eating our grapes and sandwiches, and stopped talking. we sat still for the longest time. (although i think my idea of the "longest time" is perhaps a bit skewed.)
while i was sitting there, unconsciously burning the skin on my nose, i was thinking more thoroughly about some of the things i've been mulling over all week, which go something like this: i have said forever that i'm built to run far, built to run fast. but why do i get to decide? what if i'm really built for rocking chairs and quilts, folk music and hot cocoa, long russian novels, cabins in the woods, cold winters, tomato plants, the ballet? what if i'm really built for farms and monasteries, villages and ruins?
and what if i never knew, because i never said, "Yes"?
on saturday, we (natalie, courtney, tiffany, and i) drove up to 9500 feet and hiked a beautiful beautiful trail that was seven or eight miles long. i think that there's some good and healthy shift that takes place inside of me when i get out into the quiet air (almost too high for birds) and spend all day walking. i mean, i love walking, but i'm usually walking to somewhere. i usually have some idea of what my destination looks like. in this case, it turned out to look like the pretty stream that we sat down beside at lunchtime. our destination turned out to be wildflowers and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches and the sound of the brook talking. but we didn't know that when we set out. we hadn't even planned to hike that trail. and i'm still not entirely sure that we were on the trail that we thought we were on. but i think we got to the right place. (a lot of days are like that, after all: you start out with one destination in mind, but by the grace of God you don't get there.)
we talked through the first half of our hike, pointing out pretty things, taking photos, hearing stories of the nepalese people, singing silly songs and generally doing whatever we could do to make each other laugh. (we do a good job at this. but then, we all seem jump at the chance to laugh.) we helped each other across streams and out of the path of meese, and we caught tiffany up on all of the major plot points she may have missed over the past month (and a lot of extremely minor plot points as well, to be sure). when we got to what seemed like the end, we sat down by the water and took our shoes off, stuck our feet in the stream, started eating our grapes and sandwiches, and stopped talking. we sat still for the longest time. (although i think my idea of the "longest time" is perhaps a bit skewed.)
while i was sitting there, unconsciously burning the skin on my nose, i was thinking more thoroughly about some of the things i've been mulling over all week, which go something like this: i have said forever that i'm built to run far, built to run fast. but why do i get to decide? what if i'm really built for rocking chairs and quilts, folk music and hot cocoa, long russian novels, cabins in the woods, cold winters, tomato plants, the ballet? what if i'm really built for farms and monasteries, villages and ruins?
and what if i never knew, because i never said, "Yes"?
***
yesterday, i filled a very large journal to the brim. now it is time to start something new.
(inside the front cover, i paste these words, in my friend's handwriting:
The small man builds cages for everyone he knows.
While the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low,
keeps dropping keys all night long
for the beautiful,
rowdy, prisoners.
-Hafiz)
yesterday, i filled a very large journal to the brim. now it is time to start something new.
(inside the front cover, i paste these words, in my friend's handwriting:
The small man builds cages for everyone he knows.
While the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low,
keeps dropping keys all night long
for the beautiful,
rowdy, prisoners.
-Hafiz)
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