Lessons from a Porcupine

The other day I was feeling frustrated and stuck. I live in a very small, beautiful community that doesn't really provide me a lot of opportunities. I would love to open my own gallery, but I just don't see it happening here. Watching the news and hearing about the stalled economic recovery agitated me even more. I took off for the woods just to get away from myself. I blocking myself each step of the way with my own thoughts. I needed to escape me.

I headed down a long forgotten road that the Forest Service closed off years ago. I barely could see where it once was, but I didn't care. I decided to simply follow the path my heart wanted to take, and it was heading straight for a stand of firs way off in the distance.

My steps at the beginning were frustrated and clumsy, but as the aroma of the land started to penetrate my thick cloud of thought, I slowed down and began to see what was around me. My heart opened up to the environment, and I felt my frustration begin to melt away.

I shifted from focusing upon what I thought was lacking in my own life to what I had. How lucky was I? I can drive ten minutes from my house and find myself in this beautiful place? Deep in the woods without any sounds of humans and surrounded by a forest and mountains that I dreamed about as a child. Yes, things are tough, but I love the land. I love it here.

I sat down in a circle of firs and looked up towards the sky taking it all in. That is when I heard the sound....a loud rustling in the trees not too far from me. I wasn't scared but I wasn't thrilled. I wondered if my heart led me to a not so great choice. That is when Mr. Porcupine came stumbling out from behind a tree and into the clearing I happened to be in. He took a look at me, sniffed the air, and then went about his business.

Porcupines will leave you alone if they don't think you are a threat, and he obviously decided that I was not one. He totally ignored me and in a childlike wonderment began exploring everything around us. He would sniff the grass, dig into it, taste it, look at it from different angles and then move on. His favorite find was an old tree that fell years ago. Part of it was hollowed out, and his curiousity dragged him into that hollow. Boy did he have fun looking at it, feeling it, and checking it out in every which way. He climbed in...he then backed up and stood at the entrance and looked in...he then climbed on top of the log with a little bit of difficulty and looked into it...he went back in and started exploring what he found in there. Every which way he could, he became intimately connected with that fallen tree. He reminded me of me when I was a little girl, and how every magical aspect of life needed to be explored.

As I watched him I started thinking about how we all need to approach life with a bit of porcupine's curiousity. Instead of thinking that there is one main way of doing things, we need to remember and call forward our childhood wonder of things. Let it explore our situation and look at it from all different angles, in all lights, and see if we discover any new ways to approach the situation that is frustrating us; whether it is a piece of art or what to do with our art, jobs, selling our homes, how to survive in this economy, or whatever is perplexing us in this moment. There are so many different paths that lead us to the same place.
And there are paths that haven't been walked upon in years, or paths that we never thought about forging. Let that little kid explore!

So as I write this, I have my notebook next to me. I am writing down all of the different ways I can achieve the things I wish to achieve. I am looking at it from all sorts of angles, and I am realizing, I don't need to do things the way I thought. There are many more, interesting possibilities.

I hope this finds you all well...