UNFURLING - A BOZEMAN COUNSELOR’S EXPERIENCE
“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.” G.K. Chesterton
I take a deep breath and close my eyes as my lungs fill with the chilly early summer evening’s air. The whispers of grass and wind surround me. Beneath me I feel the steady beat of four hooves carrying me further into the wilderness. The serenity around me is completely opposite from the turmoil inside.
It has been months since I’ve felt anything besides crushing heaviness or the disorienting hole of total numbness. Even now with the murmurs of the wild around me, somehow the dull hollow ache of my chest holds tight to all the pain. I left the chaos of New York to work the summer on a ranch. The contrast of environments is profound. And yet the same pain sits squarely in my chest.
We set out on this ride with a destination in mind. I am learning the route to a lake in the area. It is over an hour since we left. We are following a creek as it lazily winds its way through open meadows and forested patches. The valley walls rise high on each side. They are just starting to come alive with green after the long winter. There is even the occasional bold wildflower deciding it is time to bloom. I feel almost like a ghost taking it all in. Objectively in my brain I catalogue the beauty but it is a world away from my weary soul. The thud of each hoof beat sways my body through the daze. Up ahead I see a small rise in the trail. As I get closer I notice the valley walls widening and beginning to drop. No more than a few steps up the unassuming hill and my soul unfurls. It crashes in and out and all through me. It is like I am resuscitated. I snap into a startling presence.
I can’t quite wrap words around what happens in that moment. A lake stretches out in front of me, clear as glass, still and bright, reflecting snowcapped mountains and the hazy pink of the evening sky. All at once I can feel the breath in my lungs, my seat in the saddle, something big and beautiful inside of me. All at once I feel so very small, barely a speck amid the grandeur. And all at once I feel vastly expansive, a part of all of it.
There is a long journey between that moment and where I am now. It is filled with more heartache, joy, and learning to allow my soul to continue to expand. The shock of that moment shifted my path for which I am forever grateful. I know now that if I allow it, my soul will always bring me back to myself, back to, as Mary Oliver says, the announcement of my place in the family of things.
When I look at mountains now, if I take a moment, I can still feel my soul reaching out and in, reminding me of an astonishing truth. That I belong. That in my insignificance I am also a part what is most significant. I am not alone. You are not alone. We are not alone. We are all made to be here and all around us is an unending invitation to unfurl to the startling and exciting truth.