drop the map

"During life transitions, the obscuring stories break down and what's missing in life becomes clearer."

"To exit [the old story], we are going to have to drop the map and look around."

"Returning to essence, we regain the ability to act from essence.  Returning to the space between stories, we can choose from freedom and not from habit."

-- Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible


Can we start any journey without a mental map of it drawn out, already held tight in the hand?  Not just where, but when and what and how, all presupposed?  I keep thinking about my friend Ted, years ago in Santa Fe, a fearless Sagittarian idealist and explorer.  He told me about a road trip he and his brother took where, at the beginning, they made this agreement:  we'll take three left turns, two rights, and another left, and the place where we end up is where we'll camp.  He said they found some pretty amazing campsites that way.  I thought it was a great idea.  But at the same time, I had to ask, what if the road that went left at that second-to-last right turn was the one that called out to you with something more?

It's happened.  I could write volumes on the worlds that opened up because of those last-minute route changes.  As well as entire parallel lives that flew over and were gone in a glimpse, in the moment of not making them.  Surely all of us who have travelled could.

I just spent two weeks in a town that had never been a so much as a mark on mind's or imagination's maps.  It was an unexpectedly useful experience.  Imagination would have steered me a bit further south or east, homing in on the Rockies' deep music of rain, wind through pines, and whitewater rivers.  Mind endorsed the northeasterly drive, where a greater concentration of farms offered work-trades, and one in particular held out the kind of offer that has long entailed a bold typeface on the map.  But an actual look at that place showed it empty of the elements of place and potential I needed to find there. Montrose, Colorado turned out to be where the story was taking me in this chapter. Once I let the story disentangle itself from all the lovely tales of other lives that, at least for now, are not part of this trip.

Those obscuring stories, as it turns out, can be quite beautiful.  A few of them have kept me moving most of my life.  Literally.  Going in circles, maybe.  Like the one that has me living out life in a sweet Colorado mountain town, one of those tiny places with one main street that closes up at sundown, and locals who all drive muddy Toyota 4x4s, and no tourists except those who honor the wild country like it deserves.  Montrose is not that town.   It sits on a flat plain, surrounded by farms, the mountains just visible on a hazy horizon to the south. Two weeks' closer look gives it a spot more toward the middle of the spectrum of places lived:  not the traditional extreme of Carlsbad, where I went to high school, though its one-street brick downtown brings that sad place to mind.  And not the sensory-overload nonstop party of Portland or Boulder, either.  Which -- the surprising part -- is a very good thing.  There's room to listen to the moment here.  To honor the needs of body and spirit, when they're not pulled in so many simultaneous directions by need and want and distraction.  To just spend the afternoon on a long bike ride along the river, and maybe helping a neighbor clean their yard or build a chicken coop.  To catch up on a few good books, and get acquainted with the small but inspiring efforts of local nonprofits, and trade work on a farm for food and some excellent stories. To consider choices made out of deep listening to the soul, rather than coerced by outward and momentary necessity. These two weeks have been a right turn in the road worth taking.

Worth, it most of all, for the space that unmet expectations turn out to leave.  The kind of space in which essential things speak in the only, quiet voice which they have, and are finally heard.  Through unstructured time.  Through sleep and dreams.  Through hands in the soil.  Through three deer at twilight, just off the bike path, gifting me with a long look and a slow, fearless walk in the other direction.

Drop the map.  Maybe a gesture of exasperation.  Perhaps of surrender.  Maybe a gust of wind picks it up and carries it a few yards to the west, and when you run to grab it, you look up, and finally see the bend in the road that you want to be following.  Or even this:  the wind vaults it up and away from you, off over a mesa, and sensation returns to the feet that stand, still, on earth's surface. Connected with guidance enough.