CHANGE THE RIDE

Life..an overgrown stone road or a feisty stream..

I am fortunate in many ways. One such way is that during my time working in IT, many years ago, maybe 1997 ish, I was able to buy a second hand static caravan in the Scottish Highlands, one that’s on a site with other similar caravans not one you tow..oh no that’s a whole other ballgame and another story. It’s nothing fancy especially after all these years but it’s my bolt hole, a place to get away from towns and cities..and people.

The site is surrounded by hills, woods and forests. A walk through the forest takes us to the loch, total peace, bliss. In the early 2000’s, the story goes, the lady who owned the lochside forest sadly died, leaving it to her son. He apparently had always been a man of great plans and on this occasion he decided to put a road through the forest. I have never found out if this road was meant to facilitate the cutting down of the forest or perhaps some grander scheme such as loch view log cabins.

I like the idea of loch view log cabins but not here..not in “My” forest. Anyway, they drove a road winding down the hillside through the trees. Piles and piles of uprooted trees were discarded at the side of this road. They blasted rock from the forests hillsides and crunched it up in gargantuan machinery, spewing out smaller stones, in Scotland we would call it Type 1, bottoming..elsewhere it could be called something else. Anyway, the stones were compressed into the road surface making a track that could be driven on slowly with a car, or lorries if you were planning to fell all the trees, or bring in log cabins.

Then it all seemed to stop. For almost twenty years now nothing more has been done in the forest. Trees fall over in the wind from having their roots exposed, from having the shelter from the larger outer trees gone now, from having a road wide wind funnel driven through the centre, the forest is a mess, tree carnage but recovering and still a nice place to be.

I am writing this at the caravan, I’m here for a couple of days with the dog. We went out this morning for our usual down the loch walk and it was while I was walking down the “New Road” section of the walk a thought struck me. It was hardly possible to see the once in your face stone track. I knew it was underfoot where we were walking but instead of stones we were walking on moss, grass, small plants, baby trees. Nature, the forest, has taken great strides in reclaiming itself.

This gave rise to my thought that here was someone who had had a vision for this forest, whatever that was. They had taken time, energy, and no doubt spent a fair amount of money, to build this road and for what? They gave up. There had been a plan, a goal, a dream, a hope, enthusiastically chased at first, then as time went by, perhaps there were obstacles to overcome, distractions, other ideas to pursue but whatever the reason this dream in the forest just fizzled out.

To me this represented what so many of us do. We hope and dream and build towards an imagined goal but somewhere along the way we give it up. We just go for ordinary, average, be normal like most other people, we conform, comply with what is expected and like that stone road our dreams get overgrown and forgotten about. Occasionally there will be a bit of grass that gets worn away and we will catch a glimpse of the stones again for a while. At that time we could clear them of the grass or just let it grow over the road again.

In contrast to the road, which is now a thing of the past, the water coming down the hillside, the streams, they were all disrupted when this road was built. The road blocked their natural route down to the loch and so the streams had to make another way for themselves to get to their goal. Their goal is to be part of the loch. They carved new ways to get there, never gave up, they can’t, it just is not in the nature of a stream to give up and lie down, it is constantly moving forward to its goal, its dream, its hope, its destination.

We can be the road or we can be the stream. We can give up on our dreams or we can refocus on them, get around obstacles, deal with distractions,meet head on anything or anyone who would deny us our opportunity to try and to keep trying to make our dreams a reality. We only have this one life so let’s make the most of it for ourselves and for each other. Be a stream and don’t be the overgrown road in your life or in someone elses life by blocking their stream.

Well, that was all very deep,very zen..is that correct, zen? I dunno..tree huggerish..have you ever hugged a tree? A story for another time..

Take it easy