Apparent Defeats may be a Time to Retreat

 

I was stalking a stag today, attempting to get close enough, yet maintain a respectful distance, to get a photograph which didn’t test the limits of my zoom lens. The doe wasn’t far behind the stag, but before I could get a shot of her, or them together, a car came barreling down the lane and scared them off.

Seconds later the car came barreling up the lane…

Another lost soul who took a wrong turning. So caught up in trying to reach their destination in an efficient (and inefficient) hurry, that they failed to notice their impact on the world around them or anything else along their journey from A to B.

People get lost around here on a regular basis. It’s that kind of a place.

It’s also the kind of place lost souls retreat to find themselves.

But it won’t molly-coddle you.

One local described it thus – “You either get…  …with its wild roughness and uncultivated oddities, or you don’t. It’s not all soft and lovely. It doesn’t ask to be loved.”

You will love it, but it may take a while. It will accept you as you are, and that may disturb you, especially if you are used to pretending to be someone else to win approval.

If you’re considered weird elsewhere, you’ll fit right in here. If you’re considered normal elsewhere… it may take you a while to relax, unwind, and find your feet. You may have to take off your fancy shoes. It’s muddy around here.

This is the sort of land where nature rules and is respected. The nature around and the nature within.

When I first moved here, I was a lost soul. A soul lost in various lands which never felt like home. My nature was not respected, and I grew to disrespect it too. I grew to believe that if I could just go completely against my nature then finally I might fit in to the world around me… but I never quite felt comfortable with that. Something inside always rebelled.

 

It took me a while to run barefoot through the mud. To set my nature free.

A caged animal finds it hard to trust the world once it has been caged by it. The cage door is open, but it’s been opened before only to slam in your face and hit your sensitive nose before you make your escape. Followed by the echoing laughter of your captors.

It took me a long time to trust that the door was open and would stay that way. It took me even longer to venture out. But once I did… what a feeling!

Then came the rain… of all the other shoes dropping.

Worst case scenarios are things with which I have become very familiar with over the years of my life experience. I even learned to use them in a positive way.

 

 

If what happened wasn’t as worse as it could be, I considered myself very fortunate. Of course it could be better, but at least it wasn’t the worst.

Best case scenarios are far more daunting… they’re the sort of challenge which I am not used to, they occasionally occur, but not frequently enough for me to have figured out how to deal with them. I need practice.

Right now I am in a strange limbo, teetering between the best and the worst… not sure which way things will fall. Sometimes they seem to go one way, sometimes the other… but which one is which?

Time will tell.

When apparent defeats loom before you and around you… sometimes it is just time to retreat into nature.

Like the deer when a car barrels down the lane.