“Go to the woods,” says a voice. “You’ll feel better.”
“No!” cries another voice. This one is much louder, confrontational, in my face.
“That’s a terrible idea,” she says. “This time of year they woods are full of poison ivy, so much poison ivy that you can’t avoid walking right through it. The oils from the plant will make your skin itch, and you will be impossibly uncomfortable for days, and it will be distressing. It isn’t worth it.
“You can’t go to the woods,” the voice continues, “because in the woods there are mosquitoes that swarm around the pools of water. The mosquitos will eat you alive, and the bites will be uncomfortable and distressing. It isn’t worth it.
“You can’t go to the woods because of the raspberry canes that’ll snag your skin as you try to push through them, and you’ll feel that terrible panicky feeling of being caught, like a fish on a hook, and freeze
“You can’t go to the woods in the sun and the heat of the summer, because your skin could burn, or worse you could overexert yourself in the heat, struggle and sweat and sway until you crumpled over with tiredness…
“You could get hurt.
“Think of the aftermath, when your body is dried up and burning, and your skin is full of blackberry scratches and mosquito bites, and sunburns and poison ivy rash
when your physical self is in distress and you can’t sleep and every waking moment feels horrible.“
Fear hides her face in her hands.
“I’m just trying to keep you safe,” she tells me. “I don’t want you to be in pain, or get hurt. Stay here. Stay indoors where you can’t get hurt. Don’t go to the woods. It isn’t worth it.”
More often than not, fear is only a niggling feeling in the back of my head; fear is not so much a collection of articulated reasons as a hodgepodge of half-images. I get fuzzy memories of the last time I lost sleep because the bug bites itched, fuzzy pictures of ivy leaves and bugs.
It’s that niggling feeling that so often holds me back from doing the things that I love to do.
And so often, I felt trapped.
cut off, not just from the discomfort and distress, but from all the gladness that awaits beyond the posted signs
Until I stop to listen. Until I stop to identify which basic emotion is at the root of that feeling, and wonder what it’s trying to tell me and why.
It isn’t generally nonsense, but it’s often an incomplete picture of what’s real.
This morning, I put on a pair of very tall boots, to keep the poison ivy off my skin
And I spritzed myself with Eucalyptus. It smells horrible enough to keep the mosquitos go away
And I set off towards the woods, in the narrow strip of shade on the west side of the corn field, because even on hot days walking is bearable in the shade.
And fear said “but what if…”
And I answered, “skin will heal.”