A Lesson on Keds and Rest
In February of 2020, before the pandemic took hold, my family and I had just begun to create our own new reality. It seemed almost serendipitously-timed, our discovery of a quaint and perfectly picturesque cottage in the woods. We put in an offer in on this beautiful 1930’s masterpiece and its surrounding half acre of land in the San Jacinto mountains, and by the time we signed closing documents in late March, the world as we knew it had forever changed. Suddenly, what had felt like an exciting, voluntary adventure of a lifetime became an escape hatch out of “real life” in a scared and congested urban neighborhood. Grateful for the timing of our decision to purchase the home we’d always dreamt of owning, we slipped quietly out of the life we’d known and ventured into the woods of Southern California for the foreseeable and uncertain future.
After winding through the trees, following the veiny roads that led us further to the heart of the untainted forest, we arrived at our sanctuary with our downsized life jammed into a few carloads. It took some time for our family to adjust to the pacing and logistics of life in a very small mountain town, one at 6,600 feet in elevation and intimately inter-twined with the natural world. Contrary to my assumptions, learning to tolerate harsh weather or how to drive the narrow, windy roads to get to a grocery store wasn’t that difficult relative to other things I’d come up against.
You see, One could argue that my personal mode of moving through the world fits in much better with the pace of a frenetic city, constantly in motion, caught up in the noise and distraction in and of itself. A city that’s neither willing nor able to slow the momentum of its own hurried pace; one with few quiet places of reprieve.
Like many city dwellers though, I’d perhaps romanticized nature a bit. I assumed that sitting atop a remote overlook for 15 minutes might somehow immediately soothe the mental chatter of the day’s “to-dos” and make everything right in my world. But as it turns out, that wasn’t the case. As it turns out, it’s possible to feel just as chaotic and “in the details” in the company of nature’s grandiosity, as it is anywhere else. After a few months in the mountains, I discovered not only that Keds are an inappropriate year-round footwear choice, but also that moving oneself to a quiet, serene place, away from the noise, was actually the easy part; that actually, relocating my life just barely scratched the surface of a much larger and deeper personal paradigm around rest, trust, and the mysterious perfection of the natural world.
Most of my life, I had been under the false impression that working hard was hard. That moving quickly enough to keep up with my own relentless internal to-do list was my life’s work. Always something else to get to, even before I could finish the previous thing that had to be gotten to. What I discovered after my move was that the hardest work I’d ever take on would be sitting and staring at a tree for more than 6 minutes in a row, just focusing on my breathing, without reaching for my phone or starting to think about looming work deadlines. The hardest work is actually slowing down, in accepting that the work could wait. Ironically, as much as I’d always yearned for reprieve from the pace of the city, I was terrified to slow down. And when faced with the choice daily, sitting on my sunny deck surrounded by lush greenery and chattering birds, I’d gladly bypass the serenity of a moment in nature for the solace of my fast-paced schedule that left me with no time to enjoy the view. One might say you can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl.
So, like with anything new or foreign, I had to titrate up slowly. I had to build a tolerance for silence and for an absence of the distractions that I’d been relying on to cope moment-to-moment. I started first with a 3-minute sit, and then daily. And as my tolerance level slowly increased, so did the learning, and the healing of that part of me that was terrified of what was waiting for me in the emptiness of a moment that I might otherwise fill to the brim with tasks. The tacit curriculum began with lessons from the trees in simply being. The trees that aren’t ever worried, doubtful or reticent. Just rooted and steadfast in the present moment, persisting with neutrality through the inevitable changing seasons (the harshest and most unforgiving ones, as well as the ones with gobs of wildflowers and 75 plus degree temps). I looked to them for lessons in how to just exist, as though there’s nobody asking me to “hurry up,” nothing waiting to be solved, nothing to strive for but the absence of striving.
I took notes from our plot of land as the terrain transformed into rolling white mounds of powder, learning quickly that you can either lament the snow or go sledding in it. Learning that you can either be stuck inside taking cover, or you can be stuck inside eating chili with the people you love, playing boardgames that make you feel 12 again.
More and more over time, as I could trust the emptiness enough to spend uninterrupted time in it, I’d find myself in awe of how nature embraces the inevitability and purpose in change. I tried daily to emulate nature’s deep acceptance of the fact that even the sunniest of days eventually give way to the unforgiving chill of night; but that just like a wilted wildflower is sure to return in its full glory next Spring, the good times always come back around. Like nature, I aspired to be braver in the face of goodbyes, knowing they’re part of a grander plan full of new hello’s and fledging, green sprouts I haven’t yet gazed upon. I practiced knowing, as nature always knows, that those endings are written in some sort of invisible, cosmic playbook that no one will ever fully access or understand.
And then there’s the sky. Its expansiveness extends beyond a place my logical, overworked mind can understand, out above the clouds where the creator of every single oak leaf and granite boulder is also at work orchestrating the changing seasons of my career or my love life. Ensuring that there’s nowhere I can be that isn’t where I’m meant to be, and doing so as effortlessly as the tides change.
It turns out that nature had been sending me signs to slow down all along, signs about how simple it actually is, about how little I actually need to feel satisfied; sending me flare signals in the form of a single vibrant fuchsia flower or an up-close, silent encounter with a woodland creature with no concern for unanswered emails. The problem had been that I was simply missing the messages because I was always hurrying, or on my phone or in my head with a worry soundtrack so loud that I was deaf to the relief right in front of me. I was sometimes too consumed by problems smaller than a rural town ravaged in a seasonal wildfire. Or too busy trying to force things uphill, no better at doing so than the strongest army would be at preventing the collapse of a city as the earth’s plates shift. Like these buildings, the plans I am so intent on force-fitting my life into often fall apart for reasons I never get to know. The reasons I beg for when I scream into the dark night sky to the force I desperately hope is listening, only to be answered by the chirping of crickets. That intangible, invisible conductor who might be scattered somewhere between the stars or in the leaves, or spread beneath me in the fallen pine needles, or down in the tree roots that pre-date any worry I’ve ever had.
Today, a year and some change after our move, the nature of my real work has forever changed. Today I continually work at letting go of the wheel of my life a bit and letting the same compass that guides the birds to migrate, guide me. I can with much pride say that I’ve mastered spending a moment listening closely enough to hear the pine needles snap under my new all-terrain shoes. I’ve mastered bowing in reverence to the pink hues of the sunset that hit the jagged granite peaks just right. I’ve mastered resting, putting my phone down, and taking a real day off without the deafening voice of an inner boot camp instructor reminding me of what’s yet to be done. Even more important than all of this has been learning the lesson I didn’t know I needed: that I’m a part of this higher, natural order, and that there’s always a quiet resting place for me there, should I choose to work at working less.