Darius Pirestani

Professor Jenkins

ENGL230

18 January 2018

Mind Your Step

Today began with agitation. I became frustrated with myself as my eyes opened to the golden light of the afternoon sun. I sheepishly checked the time, even though I was already well aware that I’d slept too long again, feeling guilty of wasting those precious hours of daylight that seem all too few and far between in the winter. As I pushed that frustration to the back of my mind, old thoughts quickly resurfaced to fill the vacuum of short-lived silence and empty space – irritation, anger, exhaustion from the days before, all swirling forth in a vortex of mental commotion. I needed space.

I yearned for space, both physically and mentally; space to breathe freely beyond the four walls of my room, and space to process the backlog of thoughts I’d held off on working through for several days. Desperate to find refuge from that suffocation, I quickly headed towards the one place where I knew I’d find it: the forest. The ground was slick with mud and wet grass, weighed under the slowly melting burden of last night’s snow whose remnants still dotted the landscape with white among emerging shades of green and brown. I nearly slipped more times than I’d like to admit as I angrily stomped down the steep hill that led to my spot in the forest without any caution or concern, still brooding over the torrent of thoughts and emotions that have been congesting my head since I woke up.

I wasn’t sure what I expected to find once I did reach my spot. Answers? Guidance? Closure, even? It was silly to think that just hiking through the woods would solve all my problems, because it didn’t. I arrived at the creek with the same mental baggage I brought with me – I didn’t find any signs, or insight, or the direction I so badly wanted, but part of me knew I wouldn’t anyways. What I did find, however, was perspective. I crossed the smaller stream to the other side where two fallen trees had formed a perch directly over the larger creek, providing the perfect opportunity for a new point of view.

As I carefully navigated my way across the fallen trees, I noticed writing on one of the branches I had been holding onto.

BUT I AM NOT ALONE

A reminder that I wasn’t the first to seek guidance from this spot, perhaps.

The creek rushed beneath me, fed by the excess of melted snow as the sun rose higher across the sky. Bubbles formed with every twist and turn the water took, pouring over the large rocks that the creek flowed through, glimmering as they refracted the sunlight from above onto the bottom of the

stream. As mesmerizing as the bubbles were, they weren’t made to last – each pop would send glistening ripples of light across the surface of the creek in a beautifully ephemeral farewell. My eyes followed the remaining bubbles further downstream, and I noticed a vivid splash of pink upon the muddy water floor as a crayfish darted by. As quickly as the crayfish appeared, however, it soon dashed off between the many rocks and pebbles among the creek, not wanting to be discovered again. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed it if I hadn’t climbed across the fallen trees to get a different view.

It was far too easy for me to blindly stomp down the hill this morning in search of some kind of answer, nearly slipping several times because I was too clouded by the thoughts and emotions that fogged up my head to be conscious of where I was stepping. However, the perspective I found while I sat above the creek was much more valuable. The bubbles that burst into shimmering ripples across the surface of the water; the patches of snow that shrank to reveal verdant shades of green as the sun rose higher; the crayfish that darted into the safety of the many rocks on the creek floor – all of these things were fleeting. As quickly as those moments disappeared, so too did my uneasiness, lost in the comforting vastness of the forest. In the epilogue of Food Fight, a student named Kelsey noted that “[the farm] was where I found peace, where the only material goods I ever required were the occasional shovel or hoe. (284)” Similar to the sense of fulfillment that Kelsey felt while working on a farm, I too found peace among the natural beauty of the forest, something I wouldn’t have gotten from staying indoors. With that realization in mind, I began my way back up the hill, more mindful of where I stepped.