I have two days left in Manitoba before I head for Philadelphia for meetings and for an orientation. I’m co-leading a Youth Venture trip to Israel/Palestine in July and we’ll be doing the group orientation in Philly for one and half days. I’m really looking forward to meeting the group participants and hearing their stories, not to mention traveling out of North America again.
This past weekend a friend and I drove the 2 hours to the Whiteshell that is part of the Canadian Shield here in Manitoba. It’s a beautiful area with hills (!), rocks, and forest. Why is that anything to mention… because I’ve been surrounded by flat prairie and/or city for a mighty long time now. Rain storms were forcasted for the day we chose to hike, but we decided to go for it anyway because we both needed to get out of Winnipeg. We chose the PinepointRapids trail that began as a wide gravel trail and gradually narrowed and thickened to a single-person path in dense undergrowth that was a wee bit mucky and mosquito-infested in the rain. We saw deer, wolf, and bear tracks but didn’t meet anything other than deer and a large animal off the path that we chose to ignore and walk quickly away from. If it was a bear, it was most certainly repelled by our very advanced anti-bear whistles and claps (some other hikers had warned us about a bear on the path). The most exciting thing on that hike for me was finding a raided turtle nest with egg “shells” everywhere. Second exciting was rushing water since I like any bodies of water whether rapids, waterfalls, or oceans.
In general I found Thoreau’s Walden fairly dull when I read it in college but he did most certainly have a point when he emphasized the healing and balancing effect that nature has on a person. Nature has always been one of the places of healing for me and growing up it was the wide open Savannah and African wildlife. Since I live close to down town Winnipeg, I sometimes now need to be reminded that there is a vast difference between a city park and the truly wild outdoors.
And so I’m that much closer to feeling ready to tackle the upcoming month of travel/learning/fun. My month of stress detox was fairly successful - the world is looking larger, less fragmented, and generally brighter with increased possibilities. I have let go of more in this month than I would ever think possible and this means being OK once again with the uncertainty of the future. I’ll take the freedom of uncertainty over the bondage of control (or the illusion thereof) any day.
