What Else Is Out There?

As I walked down the steep hill of the forest, I spotted a flash of red in the brush, far from the trail.  A woman crowned with white hair and wearing a red backpack pushed aside ground cover with a stick.  After a moment or two, she moved on to investigate a new spot.  With careful, measured steps, she crisscrossed the craggy slope, bent in concentrated pursuit.

After watching her progress for some time, I approached to ask what she was hunting for.  She produced a fistful of tiny sprigs of wild asparagus.  My face clearly showed both my surprise and delight to discover such a treasure tucked among the scrub of the forest I often frequent.  Seeing my excitement, she offered me her hard-won harvest.  I couldn’t take the fruits of her effort, so I declined, assuring her I would go look on my own.  She seemed satisfied with my decision, accepting it with a firm nod of the head.  Then she pointed to her eye, indicating the close attention necessary for foraging work.

What followed was a soul expanding meander through a wilderness I thought I knew well. I spent a wonderful slow walk, attending to the forest floor in a way I never had before.  I noted the rich variety of plants, wondering at their names and potential uses.  I smelled the perfume of the earth mingling with wildflowers making their springtime debut.  I saw the subtle variations in the dirt from spot to spot.  I observed the trajectory of the sunlight as it wound its way through the canopy overhead.

I never found any wild asparagus.  But, I couldn’t even work up any disappointment over that fact.  I found the looking itself such a fertile way to focus on details that I didn’t need any other outcome.  I had discovered a new lens with which to observe these trails.  It gave me a new question to ask of the same path I knew so well.

And it taught me a brand new, thrilling question to ask: What else is out there?