The focus of this journey for me has been on getting out on the trail. This focus has brought about feelings of excitement, apprehension, frustration, and wonder. I’m having a hard time finding a balance between wanting to now all the details and letting go and putting my trust into this expedition. Openness to the unknown is becoming more and more important as our departure date draws near, but I’m afraid of getting lost, both literally and figuratively. In the midst of this expansive chaos, the expedition became real for a couple of days on shakedown. We were out, we were riding, we were sleeping under the stars. The morning smelled like grain and burnt rice. The evening accented by the creaks and moans of the slow turning windmill. Feeling painfully aware of muscles we never knew we had. This is real.
This is real
September 7, 2009 at 1:22 am (Eleni, Shake Down)
Tags: balance, Beginnings, Shake Down, trust
Words from Shakedown
September 6, 2009 at 1:09 pm (Natasha, Shake Down)
Tags: Beginnings, Creative Writing, Mindfulness, Shake Down
After we came back from our 2 night preparatory trip, Mary led us in a writing exercise to help get us get something down on paper. We produced words and phrases from our experiences, swapped them, and wrote responses/reflections inspired by those words.
Attending: Bear witness to, pay attention to, be mindful of; without expectation or judgment be fully present and responsive to the horse, the group, the environment, one’s own actions and their repercussions. Perhaps the antithesis of blundering through the world, blinded by ego. Imagine the world is a sick fiend, and we are standing at their bedside, waiting and eager to respond to any request.
Small, but nagging, pain: The kind that slowly drives you mad. The kind that you’d rather were bone shattering, that would break you and be done with it, instead of the kind that eats away at your happiness, your resilience, at the whole world you have built up around yourself, and leaves you crouching like a starved creature in the dark, chewing your fingernails until that moment when your mind tires of self-pity and turns once more to the light and peace that was always there, waiting.
Giant Picnic Table: Like children in a world too big for us, playing house and soldiers in our parent’s basement, surrounded by objects whose value and meaning we could never truly fathom. We claim for ourselves a dusty armchair, not knowing whose tears soaked that dark upholstery, whose grandmother read romantic poetry to them on Saturday nights from its lofty, lamp-lit cushions. As we sit with our toes hovering above the desert dust, we claim for ourselves the world, we claim for ourselves this expedition, we claim for ourselves our own certainty, not knowing that a small rusty can in the bushes, silent and unattended, speaks of lost stories.
Beginnings or Endings?
September 5, 2009 at 9:07 pm (Chris, Preparations)
Tags: Beginnings, Christopher, letting go, tingles
After traveling up the west coast—from San Francisco up to Canada and back—performing theatre, dance and acrobatic stilts, it was a bit of a switch jumping in to the Arizona Trail. I’ve recently discovered that transitions take a little longer for me to process than I, or the dominant culture I live in expects. As Sha insightfully shared, “beginnings are also endings, and perhaps that is why they are often frightening or difficult.” This I have found to be true. The threads of past experiences and connections often leave with more sorrow than I imagine. Like a turtle poking its head out of a shell, it can take me time to open my heart to a new group of people. But when I do, there’s no stopping it! I’m beginning to get tingles of excitement about what’s possible. There’s really too much to be grateful for, and I think tingles are a good sign.
