Hope Floats

There once was a time, early in my adulthood, when hope outweighed heartache. The future was big and bright. Fear of failure was never given a beachhead in my thoughts. I was my own man;  old enough to vote, drink, marry, and go to war.

So marry I did, then raised my hand and took the oath and donned the uniform of my country. We didn't have much materially speaking. Most everything we owned fit in our old car, but we were excited to be "adulting" as the phrase goes now.  There was little time for field and stream, nor funds to support the excursions I dreamt of.

But time moves on, as old folks warned it would. I began to find my way in the world, and gradually returned to the outdoors with rod and gun.

Just as gradually, life began to chip and grind away at my youthful confidence. Disappointments, failures, betrayals, and losses all took their swings at me. Somewhere along the way, the scales of hope and heartache which seemed balanced, tipped from life's heavy thumb.

I used to marvel at the haggard faces of my elders, wondering how age could ravage a visage so. Now I realize it isn't the years that etch lines into faces, but rather the tolls extracted. Like the surf pounding the Cliffs of Moher, the wear may be slow, but it is persistent.

I often sought solace and healing in the woods, fields and streams. Though some remedy was found there, healing was always incomplete. Writers eschew the healing power of nature, and it perhaps is apostasy to declare otherwise, but there it is. The outdoors is like any other escape from the difficulties of life; it cannot cure them, only hold them at bay for a little while.

Sometimes a little while is all you can afford, and sometimes it is enough to catch your wind and rejoin the fray. But like an addict, my need for escape is increasing day by day, chasing that high. Perhaps my healing is too great a burden to lay at the feet of nature. Perhaps nature was never intended to be the cure but a conduit, and a catalyst.

So nature becomes my guide rather than an end unto itself.  It tantalizingly hints at something in our collective psyche, "this is not as it once was;  it groans to reclaim its former grandeur".  So as a young man is entranced by the beauty of his beloved, her beauty itself is not the goal. The beloved is.

And so in my daytime fantasy of escape, visualize the mountains and streams I hope to soon visit. To wash away the mundane, trivial and routine, yes.  But the goal is the soul-need to connect with the Creator through creation.

 


  "The mountains are calling, and I must go." - John Muir

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