Shifting

after the rains this tiny creek becomes a torrent flowing 

... there has been a shift ... in my twenties walking the streets or forests of Europe, especially the Vienna Woods, was haunted by history ... longed the feeling of walking the land in Canada where even the urban wilds had a sense of newness ... of unforged paths not tread ... 

... certainly an illusion ... yet bathed in the illusion ... every return to Europe since that early first visit confirmed the weight of history, especially when in Paris and the surrounding landscape ...

... now walking the trails on the edge of Seoul a different sensation has taken hold ... am not walking with ghosts ... the carefully cared for paths exude a respect ... the past is not haunting - the ancestors support ... even living within ... the past is alive ... ready to be touched ... my feet listen to the stone placed which guides my passage ... the path willingly shares layers of stories to be honoured ...

...what has changed:  age? place? circumstance? ... why the transformation ... i no longer long for the wild of wilderness ... that struggle to survive ... we survive ... these paths have a disdain for boundaries to be sure ... just listen to the path breathing and a contemplative dialogue emerges ... 

... i walk being offered a different way of thinking ...  about experiencing the tenuous boundaries i draw between past & present, urban & rural, civility & wildness ... one transforms & it seems simple ... adapt ... 

... adapt ... what biologists call behavioural plasticity ... 

... adapt .. paths lead somewhere ... only i have learned not where the signage states ... or even to assumed destinations ... i walk paths to discover my unknown habitation ... reaching the unknown invites a crossing of the threshold ... & paths relentlessly change ... this evening which brought this meditation i was walking in a gentle rain ... it had poured continuously the whole day ... the quiet, sleepy creek had transformed into a furious torrent flooding parts of the trail ... i walked until it became impassable ... this was a mountain path after all ... promised myself to come this way again turning back before the darkness would make the way treacherous ...

::Note:: ...  am a wanderer by inclination & a walker by choice as Gavin Van Horn expressed in The Way of Coyote Shared Journeys in the Urban Wilds ...

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