2021-032 | PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION TO NATURE, PART 2

WISDOM TRAILS: When you do not race against time and against your itinerary you see everything. You would have seen this event and you would have understood why the brown fly willed itself in the middle of two lines of harm.

 

First seen in Facebook

July 21, 2018

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IF YOU ARE TOTALLY CONNECTED with the environment you are in, you would totally see each and every detail. To do so, you would have to shed something in you which does not fit in. It could be your attitude. It could be the smell and color of your clothes. It could be your adherence to time. Or it could be the number of people with you. 

Fitting in is not about feelings and that sort of thing. It is about just you and nobody else. You may wander along a trail yet you are blind and deaf to the many events unfolding all around you. Your presence is just skin deep. Try to close your eyes first and take a deep breath. Inhale the essence of the place. You would notice not the silence but the life around you.

Feel the ground vibrate. Hear the birdsongs and the insects buzz. Try to focus more on the slightest sounds and the whispers of the tiny creatures. Dance with the leaves and branches as the breeze stirs it to life. Blend with your surroundings. Make the best of your presence by appreciating life to the fullest. Touch a tree trunk. Smell a flower.

Look up, once in a while, over the canopies, for a glimpse of the blue sky and a passing cloud to break the green monotony. Look down, most of the time, beyond the undergrowth, to witness life amidst the decay. A hole there and a scat there. A leftover fruit at your right and a footprint up ahead. A loosened rock and an unnaturally bent leaf exposing its underside.

Follow that foot ahead of you and watch where the owner stayed for a while. Excitement pumps your heart faster as you found many traces of paw prints beside that human you followed and you know that those prints were that of a dog’s. Slowly, you begin to enjoy this contactless and invisible rapport as if you are reading a book.

As you sharpened your wits to new heights, you notice that your footfalls are light. You now move without a sound and you leave with almost no traces of you. Your feet becomes discriminating on where you place it. You now preferred to step on rocks and exposed roots. You even step beyond a line of ants crossing the path. 

Your eyes begin to catch slight movements and you see a spotted dove from your peripheral vision poised to glide from a low branch to a much lower branch. You turned your head to its direction and the bird flew away, startled at your presence. You learned a mistake and then, after that, you could see everything now. 

Another line of ants crossing the trail. You stopped instead and bent your knees to see their activity better. While staying still, you observed that there are two lines of ants instead of one and there was a fly in between them. Why did the fly placed itself to potential harm? You ask yourself. Then in one swift move, the fly snatched a tiny sphere of moisture from one ant and repeated it many times on the other ants.

That fly was a reflection of you. You are in harm’s way while you walked the path alone but you persisted to stay and, in fact, kept coming back, because you liked it. While you were at it, you snatched tidbits of information and common sense in your solitude wanderings that your superficial world could not provide you. End of story.

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WARRIOR PILGRIMAGE BLOG, personified by this writer, is synonymous with the Outdoors, since Bushcraft and Survival is its niche. Safety and Security are its bedrock when it ventured into organizing outdoor events that involved people as in adventure/pilgrimage guideships and seminars; and explorations and expeditions. 

Through tutorship, experience, folk knowledge and good old common sense, this writer was able to collect useful information which he is currently documenting in a book titled, ETHICAL BUSHCRAFT. He shares some of this information and knowledge in his training sessions; in his social-media account; and in this blog.