Going out and coming back

There is a network of public walking paths all through Port Townsend, and this morning I take myself out for a bit of exploration.  None of the trails are marked and I deliberately take a turn off of the main trail that I know.  This path is much more windy then I imagined and I think that it leads me back to my original trail, in a large half circle.  I turn to the right wanting to make sure that my assumption is so.

Lucky for me, I am incorrect and I am thankful that I am careful to check out my assumptions.  I am on a path that is perpendicular to the original path, which I imagine cuts straight through.

I walk on the perpendicular path for some time and reach a crossroads.  Always making right turns I assume that I will end up where I began.  I walk much further than I think would lead me back to a crossroads and rather than push into my assumption, I retrace my steps.

I am happy for my prudence.  Soon I am reunited with my original path and I head home.

I remember being in Berkeley and continuing to walk in wider and wider circles.  I look forward to this new exploration through the woods and charting my progress on a map and learning where I am in relation to the sun.

I check out my mailbox and am delighted to see a label with my last name on it when I open it and look inside.  I note a Washington license plate on the car parked on the street and feel delight in my heart.

My surroundings are new, but my dreams are as old as the earth.  In this recognition and tensions of opposites, I, we are held.  Always.

A path through the woods

 I am learning the lay of the land in Port Townsend, WA as I begin my 10-month ministerial internship at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Lucky for me my lovely apartment on the Quimper Pennisula is surrounded by hiking trails, and I have arrived in time for blackberry season.

So after settling in, and filling my refrigerator and pantry shelves with a generous trip to the Food Coop and to Trader Joes in Silverdale, I donned my jeans, garden shirt and gloves and walked to the patch Stephen and I had located several days before.

 The landscape is lush and the brambles intense. Blackberry picking in the Pacific Northwest is serious business and more than once I found myself totally caught up in my desire to reach the thumb-sized black jewels. Walking home, with a couple of quarts in my shoulder bag, I was sure that I had never picked many blackberries before, remembering with fondness the wild raspberries and blueberries I had gathered in the Upper Delaware.

But upon returning home and examining my scratches that dotted my knees, grabbing me through my thick jeans, a memory of scratches from my elementary school days broke through my consciousness. Our brains store our memories and it's lovely to be exploring this new place and remembering old ones too.