Sometimes in the bush, you find things you did not know you were looking for. Sometimes it’s courage, laughter, wonder or pain. Sometimes it’s seeing parts of yourself that you did not know were even there.
Something about walking, climbing, falling, getting up, all surrounded by wet green, not knowing how much further you have to go, or what things will look like when you get there, is profoundly powerful. It’s about trust in the guides that have gone before you, even though they’ve gone so far along the trail that you can barely see them anymore. It’s about gratitude for the ones that stay behind with you when you struggle. It’s about feeling what your body is really for – to work, to struggle, to push. It’s about knowing what your heart is really for – to love, to experience, to take a chance, to let it all go, to jump off the deep end.
It’s about realizing that what is waiting for you at the end of the road is more beautiful and more perfect than you could ever have imagined and understanding that the journey is just as beautiful as the destination.
When you start to create, it is like walking in the forest for the first time. All you can do is feel. There is no knowledge that you can write down or hold onto or hold up for inspection and say “Here! This is what I want to create, this is what it will all look like in the end”. All you can do feel the path with that part of your brain that makes the back of your neck prickle and makes your pores raise – half instinct, half divinity.
If you’re lucky, along your path as a creator, you will remember the lessons of the forest. Some days it will appear out of the corner of your eye. You will scent green on the wind, or hear a rush of a waterfall in the distance. As you create and make mistakes and get lost, think of the forest and it will find you again.
Only the forest is real.
Writer: Ayanna Gillian Lloyd
