It all depends upon which way the wind blows. Am I really this fragile? Is my physical and mental health really so dependent upon which way the wind blows? No, really, I’m asking. I had a week of summer hiking planned, beginning with a Monday drive up to our cabin. We have a cabin. Can’t I just stop at that point and have gratitude? I can hike. Isn’t that good enough, even if it’s not as often as I would like or have been able to in the past? I live in Cascadia. Shouldn’t I just be grateful for the bounty of beauty all around me, the vast majority of the time, and even probably still there through the thick veil of smoke?
I had already planned out the drive up and the drive back, the days I was going to hike, and each particular trail. Summer hiking in the North Cascades has been, for over a decade, my favorite thing in life. I look forward to it all year—all the time that those mountain passes are buried in feet of snow, when I would feel too unsafe hiking through avalanche country. So I let it just rest, waiting for what used to be June 23rd, the unofficial first day for me to hit Snow Lake Trail to kick off summer hiking. This year, because of the reduced snow pack over the winter, June 23rd actually became May 28th. With nearly a month earlier melt-out in the mountains, I knew smoke was likely in the offing. Didn’t I just receive a possible additional month of hiking this year? Can’t I just be filled with gratitude?
Summer smoke screams at me so many things. Why did we make these choices? Why did we collectively as a planet decide to fill the summer skies in some of the most beautiful places on earth with carcinogenic, choking clouds? The summer smoke for me makes many of the other challenges that I see in life harder to take, harder to look away from, harder to deny. And since I’m still not as far along on the path as I’d like to be, harder to learn to accept.
But there is hope. I am learning how to accept. With mentors like Pema Chödrön, I’m learning to let go. That really could have been the title of this piece: Let Go. I’m sure I’ve used it a few times in the past, so this must not be my first grappling with this concept. Yep, five separate titles so far echo this struggle of mine: Letting go (with grace and hope and gratitude), Let go!, I’ve learned to let go of everything, except attachment!, Let go of attachment to outcome, What can you let go of? and Let it go! Is this your most difficult challenge as well? I’m pretty sure, at least at the present time, it is for me.
Midlife does that. We can see and feel many of the same things we did just a few years earlier that are starting to slip out of reach. We can see the number of laps left around the sun getting down to numbers that are hard to look away from. But as the perfect flower contains the snow melting, the clouds forming, and the bud eventually dying and giving way to future buds, so too does this phase, this period, this lesson, this vibrating manifestation of love. I lean so heavily at times like this on the mentors that I’ve had and those that I’ve simply read. I vacillate so violently between hope and despair. I’ve heard this is precisely when real growth happens!
