I was hiking across the top of the barren hill in the midday
sun. My dark green t-shirt became an envelope of heat sheathing my torso. The
wide embrace of the sun advanced itself across my cheeks, along my arms from
hemline to fingernail, down my legs between shorts-line and shoe-line. The
crown of my head was a fireball. My toes, feet, ankles began to swell inside my
insulated socks and hiking shoes. Even as I knew I was tolerating it well, I
also felt I could become suddenly overwhelmed. I could lose my steady pace and
rush headlong into the blaze. My mind could have done that.
But just as I was about to craft a story about all things
intense, desiccated and brittle; about how maladjusted the satellites are that
beam “70 degrees F” from weather centers to my phone; about the distaste I have
for dead grass, stagnant ideas, rude awakenings and the deep harm of cruelty,
war and all things unjust…
Just then I stopped.
I stopped my mind dead in its tracks.
I stopped my mind, looked out at the landscape of dark green
vines and darker green hillsides, and I was returned to the present moment. And
in being so, I became aware that a breeze, cool as autumn and dainty as a
whisper, was rolling over the hilltops in rhythmic beats. That breeze was
coming, cleansing, blowing off the chaff – a never-ending sea of refreshment. And
I knew in the awareness of the soft presence of that current that I could
breathe in wholeness and become re-centered.
We always have the choice to hold the whole. In the heat of
the moment, we might be overcome in a drenching sweat. Or we might be so
focused on escape from whatever is present, whatever is up for us, that we turn
our gaze to the future – pervasively brighter or bleaker; or we careen backward
into a past we have shellacked with regret or nostalgia. But each time we can
return to the now of our lives, we relearn how to carry ourselves in wholeness.
Very little is all heat or all love; most of what we encounter in our landscapes
is traversable in balance if we are willing to open our eyes to the totality of what is actually.there.right.then.
All blog images created &/or photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2014 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
