After a long break, my husband and I went on a hike nearby. We drove for about 10 mins away from home, then started walking. Meanwhile, he told me about a couple he read about, both photographers, who traveled into the nature, lived in a tent that could easily expand on the roof of their car. Interesting is the word he chose to describe them, it was an excited interesting from his tone as he repeated it several times. In my head I also said interesting but with a flat tone bordering on anger.
So I told him; I told him the idea of being cooped up in a tent, and using public showers was eerie. He got silent, a very disgruntled silence where he will not tell me what exactly is bothering him. Yes after all that time being cooped up at home, here we were in beautiful nature and we were arguing, feeling miles apart, over nothing.
Then we started climbing up a hill, with thick brush. The path was there, but it looked like no-one used it for a while. I followed him, panting and taking water breaks, and realizing that early afternoon when the sun was at its strongest was not the best time to do this, also, that I was out of shape entirely. So we climbed in silence wondering if/when we’ll run into rattle snakes. As far as wild adventures go, this was extreme for us. Yes we had come across bears, far away, during our trips to National or State Parks but having grown up in the city, we felt this close by trail with its snakes and bobcats was just as threatening.
Even that line of thinking disappeared as we went on. On the way back all I cared about was the next step; it was steep downhill, and if I wasn’t careful I could easily find myself gliding down like a sack of potatoes. By the time we got to the car we still weren’t talking to each other but the anger and the feeling of being misunderstood had disappeared from our moods.
We laughed about our little quarrel on another day when once again we were in nature, this time in a park as we walked 10k steps on a late afternoon.
When in doubt just go out in nature. It will strip the silliness out of you, while showing how silly you are as it threatens you with rattlesnakes and demands you pay attention to it and your relationship to it every step of the way, all the while you can’t help but admire its complex beauty…
