The rutted path: eyes on the mountain

​Listen to this spoken musing.

As I step into the bath I have this image of myself walking down the rut of a dirt road. I can even see the wire and post fence that runs along on the far side of a wide ditch full of weeds on the one side, and an easement of the road, also weedy, on the other side. I....I have often had these images, these visions of journeys, but in the past couple of years they've mostly been either, I guess helpful in allowing me to understand where I'm at or even, a year ago, making a fairly significant and major decision to leave the job that I was doing. So I’m curious about why I’m walking down a rut on a road ....

As I sink into this walk I have to say it doesn't feel entirely like that kind of rut we think in when we're stuck. ‘Cause I can see myself walking it as if I’m walking like a tight rope but playfully, arms out, one foot in front of the other as if I'm balancing. But of course I’m not going to fall off of anything maybe fall out of something.

And I don't feel, mmm .... I don’t feel anxious about being in this rut. I'm just in some ways using it as a way to follow the road without having to entirely watch my feet because I can feel the little path in the middle of this.

That's helpful, actually, to understand that in this moment the rut doesn't have to be something keeping me stuck but something keeping me on a path that for some reason I'm walking on and enjoying looking at the distance, the edges.

When I look down the road there's an openness. And I see off in the distance a mountain .... A mountain that is tall, peaked, inviting. And in this moment I am just continuing to walk toward it along this momentary path, this momentary country road .... Somehow knowing that there will be a point at which suddenly I and the mountain will meet.

But in the meantime I can simply enjoy walking on the ground and being where I am .... meeting who I meet along the way and seeing what presents itself on this particular part of the path .... ....