Here I am, in the garage walking the ramps, again. To spite having to do this, I want to do this. Especially, right now. I needed a night, just me and concrete below my feet, etching out the good, the bad and the ugly from my day. Today was a particularly hard one. This is not just training, it’s meditation.
Walking on concrete does not take the place of the rugged terrain of the trail, but because of my ever expansive schedule during season, this is what I have.
I noticed out there in the wood, survival to a degree depends on focusing on every step, over and over again. Eventually, you forget the problems of the real world. There is no time for that, only the current step is certain, shaky at best, and choosing wisely and quick as to where the next foot goes is imperative. Never does it occur to you to wonder about steps taken days or even weeks ago. And steps you will take, why worry? You can not predict their placement nor are you familiar with the terrain. There is only now. The next step.
This can be simulated in the garage setting I think more when I’m climbing stairs and less when I’m wandering ramps. In fact, my nose is buried in this phone as I write this blog and walk slowly down to the second floor parking, descending unaware, except through my peripheral, what I should avoid and in what direction I’m heading. As opposed to the ramp, you can’t ignore steps up or down in a stairwell or you might just find yourself loosing some teeth. Same thing on trail, maybe worse.
So, I ask myself today, after a long, arduous day making mistakes and potentially killing beautiful relationships, where has my mind gone? Why am I so selfish? When did I let the real world so easily suck me back in and convince me that the next step is as sure as an expectation? Where has my focus on now gone? Where is that feeling of discontent, the every day uncomfortable feeling of where will my foot land next?
When you get off trail and enter back into the real world, you basically find yourself living in a land of aliens. It can be actually hard to assimilate back into the population, back into ordinary, routine, responsibility. Never had I felt so alone. Never had I felt so much like running back into the abyss. I thought I was immune to the world’s perversions, but they sucked me back in with a vigor. In fact, I welcomed it almost. Hot showers and food, a comfortable bed, parties and work and engagements and projects. The picture of the me the world knows, expects. My only hope is to return to the proverbial stairwell. Get off the ramp and focus where my next foot must go, immersing myself in now, because that’s all we really have. Expectations are not real. The future is nothing but a dream. The past cannot be changed, but we must learn from it, and not make the same mistakes.
Everything I needed to bring me back to center, I found in the brisk walk of a stairwell. I thank God, the universe, The power of the mind to help me forgive myself for the past, forget about the future and focus on here and now. Each step I take like the steps of a stairwell, like the steps down a trail through the mountains. Maybe I will find myself again, not the picture, but the person.
