Paths

Followed or foreign, easy or daunting

Nature is white and grey with hints of green and brown in all shades — the sky an abstract painting in pastels, but no blue anywhere. The cold is so stark, so insistent, that I can’t but cover my face and tug my beanie further over my ears. The world is muted and soft, caressing, the velvet veil broken only by the crunching under my feet and a lonely bird’s cry high above.

The park is what they call a park cemetery. Graves are placed in neat rows, behind autistically trimmed hedges, juxtaposed to create an intricate, symmetrical pattern when looked on from above. A pattern reveals itself from the ground as well, mesmerisingly shifting with the angle of your gaze.

In between the plots of graves, tall majestic trees tower, creating a shield, cover from wind and downpour. Twisty dark green pine trees and barren larch, birch, beech, and elm in perfect unison.

This place is beautiful in its curated form, no matter the season, and my favourite place for a walk.

In the back, there’s a place that grows wild. It’s not big, maybe 200 by 200 meters. The ground was scorched a few years ago, for the sake of biodiversity, and since then it’s been left more or less untouched.

It is a patch of wilderness amid our curated world, littered with tiny shrubs and trees grounded by grass and flowers, and, at the moment, covered in snow with golden tufts of withered grass sticking out everywhere. Paths crisscross throughout, allowing for time spent here to be prolonged, or merely allowing for a shortcut, depending on your mood.

I love this space, this little haven, that showcases the wondrous beauty of chaotic coherence that nature paints so masterfully.

In the fall frail young birch trees stand proudly with their bright yellow leaves, like burning bushes littered throughout, in summer it’s littered with delicate blooms in every colour. Now, the big twisty evergreen pines and the dark barren trunks and branches of deciduous trees and bushes dominate, some heavy with red berries that stand out, stark against the otherwise monochromatic palette.

I trod up to the end of one path, turn to my left, and follow the next one, doubling back. I stop as the dog does, its curiosity piqued by something seductive under the snow, and look out over the landscape before me. Even though I’m mere meters from the path I walked just seconds ago, it is completely hidden from view. Other paths cross mine as I walk on and once in a while I get the sense of a symmetrical line off to the side, but it vanishes as fast as it’s conjured up. Perhaps a path - perhaps just a mirage.

My pace is slow, the dog finding ever more interesting scents at every bush and tuft and I enjoy letting him get his fill, letting my thoughts roam free. Standing there, looking at a symmetrical line in the brush, I can’t help but think how these hidden paths echo the intricate and mysterious journey of living.

In our lives, we choose a path to walk, or, more often, are thrust upon one. We look at life, like I look out over the landscape, from that path, from that vantage point, and through the lenses our experiences, traumas, and joys provide us.

Sometimes we sense another path in our vicinity or see other people trodding along in the distance.

Sometimes a path crosses ours, leading in another direction entirely and we can choose to turn off the one we’re on and find another destination to pursue.

Sometimes we reach the end and realise that others have arrived at the same place, by another path. Other times we are oblivious to anything other than our own path.

Sometimes the path is so crowded that it may be completely impossible to follow, or maybe following it is the only viable choice, the crowd carrying you forward.

Sometimes the path leads you onto a narrow ledge or through a deep gorge, and choosing another may seem impossible.

No matter what path we are on, one thing is for certain: There will be other paths out there, even if they are invisible to us or seem unreachable.

We might know they’re there. We might not. Sometimes new paths cross ours and we get to choose. Other times getting to them means walking off our path and into the wilderness, traversing the unknown, climbing that cliff face, or jumping off the ledge, into the air, not knowing if we’ll land safely or even find a new safe path.

Some of us get thrown off our path, landing on our knees amidst unknown bushes and poisonous berries, forced to find our way in uncertain terrain.

Some of us fall off, free-falling for a long time before anything catches us and some of us have to climb until our fingertips are bloodied, muscles screaming.

Finding yourself in that situation can feel lonely. It can feel daunting, and insurmountable. The fog obscuring your sight might be so thick, you can’t even see your own hands.

No matter how hopeless it may feel, always remember: The sun shines behind the clouds. The seasons will change, just like the weather and our emotions. When the cliff is crested, the gorge or the wilderness cleared, the rewards will reveal themselves.

Looking back upon the way we came, we might also see that where there was no path before, one has been carved into the fabric of life, ready for another soul to follow.

I wonder if that might be the biggest reward of them all.

Invisible paths, visible paths, still-untrodden paths. It’s life, and we are the lucky ones, who get to live it, no matter how hard it may be to traverse.

The dog pulls on the leash, urging me out of my reverie and back onto our path. This one, for me, leads home, to cleaning and cooking and loving.

I wonder where the next one will bring me.

This piece was inspired by Modern Women’s September prompt: Visibility. It doesn’t answer the prompt in the way intended, so I won’t include it as such, but it needs air, to be visible to the world. A thought prompt for the new year to come.

Here’s to you, Modern Women, and to all a joyous, prosperous, and rewarding 2024.

© 2023, T. H. Cleemann