For the last several days, my husband and I and dear friends have been
visiting the Canadian provinces of New
Brunswick and Nova Scotia, driving the astoundingly beautiful coastal roads
that have led us through forests, along ridges, through mountain passes, along
rivers and given us breathtaking views of the Atlantic Ocean where it crashes
against the shores of Cape Breton. The next few days will take us to Prince
Edward Island before heading south toward Maine and then eventually home again.
We have been traveling in unfamiliar territory on roads we
have never seen before, sleeping in strange places and eating in untried cafes
and restaurants. Traveling “off season”
has often left us wondering when we would find the next place to eat since most
of the businesses are still closed.

Taylor writes about how we humans get into stable patterns
that help us to move through our daily lives in an orderly way -patterns that
become automatic and almost unconscious.
She compares this to the way cows follow well trod paths day in and day
out without having to think about where they are going or what they are doing. She writes “I am convinced that this is normal human behavior, which means that
something extra is needed to override it.
Why override it? Because once you leave the cow path, the unpredictable
territory is full of life. True, you cannot always see where you are putting
your feet. This means you can no longer
stay unconscious. You can no longer count on the beaten down red dirt path
making all of your choices for you.
Leaving it, you agree to make
your own choices for a spell. You agree
to become aware of each step you take, tuning all of your senses to exactly
where you are and exactly what you are
doing.

While traveling with a fairly dependable GPS device, it is
hard to get REALLY lost, and yet the experience of traveling through an
unfamiliar wilderness landscape does lead to reflection on the need to leave
behind familiar patterns, however temporarily.
On those occasions when the device “can’t find us” we do get to have the
experience of being lost. All of a
sudden, it is just us in the car in the wilderness, unable to even sense direction
because of the fog and the lack of an appearance by the sun.

On our travels, we were largely without the benefit of TV
and the nightly news. Some of the hotel televisions required a degree in
electronic technology in order to figure out which of the three remotes
controlled which aspect of the TV! (We
fondly remembered when all we had to do was turn on the TV and choose a channel
out of the 5 or 6 that were available!) So we pretty much gave up our predictable
6 o’ clock evening news pattern. When we
finally reconnected with the “outside world” I realized just how fully we had
over-ridden the “predictability of the cow path.”

Getting off the path, journeying through mountainous
wilderness, traveling miles and
miles through largely unpopulated and
wild ocean landscapes, feeling the remoteness and isolation that comes with fog
and rain and wind in strange places all sharpened our senses and our
receptivity to the beauty of so many diverse human beings when we reached
“civilization” again.

Our well beaten paths are so limiting. Wandering in the wilderness, getting lost, is life and consciousness expanding. Jelaluddin Rumi asks
the provocative question: Why, when God’s
world is so big, did you fall asleep in a prison of all places?
Vicky Hanjian
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