Golden

I’ve got this little trick I do when I am writing and I get stumped.

When the words fail me and my thoughts get fractured:

I take a walk.

I force myself to drop everything and move away from the journal.

The computer.

The post-it note.

I force myself to push down the panic rising in my chest stemming from the fear that I won’t find the answer or the way. I reason that if I can step away for a moment and allow my head the time that it needs to process, that the answer will swim towards the surface of my mind to where I can grasp it in my fingers.

Something tangible.

Something workable.

Something with a sheen and a body and a weight.

I head out the door and start down the driveway and think. I give my mind permission to wander and, generally, eventually, the answer presents itself to me.

It is Sunday night. It is 8:30 and very dark. The kids are in bed.

I call the dog and, together, he and I walk to the end of the driveway and back.

To the end of the driveway and back.

To the end of the driveway and back.

I listen to the jingle of his tags and the clip of his nails on the asphalt.

I flip through the mail that hadn’t been taken from the box yesterday.

The dog and I do the driveway walk about five times until I can think again.

The solution reveals itself to me and I become desperate to get a pen back in my hand. I am driven to get the keyboard back beneath my fingertips.

I run upstairs and allow the answer to flow out and out and out.

To clarify. To gel. To emerge.

Then, once it’s there, I can sit back and re-read and analyze and edit and correct. Finally, there it is before me: the message I have been searching for.

Once it’s down on paper it serves as a map to the next piece.

A road to the next road.

An intersection.

A white arrow on black pavement pointing me the way.

Today I read a Huffington Post piece centered around the concept of The Pollen Path.

The Pollen Path refers to a Navajo myth describing the journey to the source of life and the center of existence. The life-seeker and journey-taker know when they are on the correct road because everything around them is covered in a fine gold powder.

In her blog, Jessica Fox describes the search for her own Pollen Path. She relates living a seemingly perfect life and then, seemingly overnight, discarding it for what she knows in her heart to be right.

Don’t worry, I am not packing up my children and moving to live on an ice flow in Antarctica. I am, however, completely taken in by the concept of tuning into the world and yourself in an effort to understand where your heart should be.

I can understand this image.

I can see the light and the joy in it.

I can tilt my head up and see the sun filtering dustily through the trees.

I have to take some time because the concept of the pollen path is tremendous. It overwhelms me because I have to discard the desire to buy into the possibility that once you are on the path it is easy. In fact, I think that is not the case at all.

No path is easy.

Even one that you want to take.

To walk a Pollen Path you need to move slowly.

You may mis-step.

You may need to stop and have a peanut butter sandwich.

Some trail mix.

A sip or two of water.

I have to reason that the path itself may really be a series of stones and to get to each stone you need to take tiny jumps.

Little leaps.

An oxymoronic series of faith flips.

But what of those of us that are too overwhelmed to walk forward? I think the answer for those of us is inward. It is in our guts and in our hearts.

It is easy to walk when you know the way. Yet, there is still relief when you arrive at your destination and see a checkered flag.

What is difficult is walking down a path that you had thought was the Pollen Path but was instead mislabeled.

What then?

How do you look backwards at all that you have built-a job maybe, a career perhaps- and turn in the other direction?

I think the answer there is in reassessing the direction from where you have come. You have to bundle up those things and take them with you. Because no experience or love or job or commitment is without merit.

There are lessons there.

Things to tuck away in your backpack as you push forward towards the way that you know is right.

And no one can tell you your way because they are busy finding theirs.

In her blog, Ms. Fox talks about the importance of following ones instincts and if the instincts “lead us to a cubicle in Manhattan one day and a sub-arctic book shop in Scotland the next, then so be it. The pollen path is a path, after all”.

If you are lucky, you have the space to look around and see that there are others with you on your journey. They can’t tell you where to go or what is right-you have to decide that for yourself. But, they can walk next to you on a path that may be similar to yours.

It’s not always simple.

It’s not always easy.

Take comfort in my secret: Just take a walk and keep your eyes and heart open.

I promise you will get where you allow yourself to go.