ThroughLines

Some days I have to put on my boots and set out to explore. There doesn’t need to be a specific destination or task to propel me, however I know with certainty I must go.

As you can see, these XtraTuf boots aren’t made for long hikes, or rock climbing, or scaling Everest. They’re made for getting dirty and wet, for mucking about, for gaining sure footing in oozing mud and gravel. They give me confidence to navigate uncertain ground. That is why I love them and have them always ready by my door.

As a very little girl of six or seven, I had another version these boots that I would slip into on weekend days to explore the stream by my house. For uncounted hours I walked the stream bed, and pressed my fingers into the shallow banks on either side to find a worm, or into the water to catch crayfish or an elusive skate bug. I could follow the stream to a pond at one end. In the other direction I could duck through a long round culvert under the road and venture into the woods. The dark mass of trees that soon crowded the stream’s banks provided a natural barrier I would not cross.

The 18th century poet William Wordsworth, and modern essayists Rebecca Solnit (Wanderlust) and Bruce Chatwin (Songlines) are just a few of the lyrical writers who have noted the ways that walking, by its very movement and activity, serves an essential function for our very livelihood: as a means of supporting one’s existence.

In the terms I often turn to, I understand that the cadence of walking can help organize a disrupted, frightened, fragmented self. It can help bring the parts and functions of the body in tune with each other. In times of great collective and personal distress, uncertainty, and danger, such as we are facing in these days of pandemic, political upheaval and climate crisis, the cadence of walking can restore confidence and hope when they seem out of reach.

But what if you’re unable to walk? For some years I helped to run a therapeutic horseback riding program for people with disabilities. Our youngest client was 18 months old. The oldest was 85 years old. What I witnessed daily, often with astonishment, was that the walking rhythm of the horses served the same organizing activity for their riders as if they had been able to do the walking themselves. Neurologically, physiologically, emotionally, and cognitively, calming and mastery took place. The riders became connected and confident in themselves, and with those who were at their side supporting them. A sense of self and community was affirmed by the shared walking rhythm of horse and rider.

I think of walking, with or without my boots and my pony, as a ThroughLine. It’s not particular to me, but it supports me and carries me through time and place. It provides a sense of continuity, safety and orientation. The rhythmic movement and paths that walking makes allow me to remain in the company of all life.

Mendacity. Say it out loud, slowly, and then with force. You know what it means because of how it sounds as you say it. And sometimes you can even smell the truth of it.

Tennessee Williams wrote: “Didn’t you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room? There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity. You can smell it. It smells like death.”

And the reply: “Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an’ death’s the other.”

In this conversation between Big Daddy (Burl Ives) and his son Brick (Paul Newman) in the 1958 movie “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Tennessee Williams dramatizes his premise that living a lie destroys lives. St. Augustine wrote: “A lie disturbs the universe.”

At this moment in time, one can feel surrounded, suffocated by the mendacity in our political life and discourse. The dictionary definition, dishonesty, doesn’t do justice to the corruption of the senses created by a relentless assault of lies. Many experience this time as life-destroying, an existential threat.

Each of us struggles to devise ways to resist “the system” of mendacity. Most of us reject the notion that only alcoholism or death can get us out. What then can provide powerful antidotes to the destructive effects of mendacity?

Try Music. A very dear friend devoted many years of his young life to “Sharing the Dream” of Martin Luther King Jr. through music and story-telling. He invited diverse members of this small agriculture-based community where I live to come together to experience the communal joy and release of music, and to hear the recorded speeches of MLK. For several years the band and hundreds of members of the community gathered on my front lawn (and other venues) to experience a life-affirming connection with others through music. The speeches of MLK reminded us that a vision of the future based on attunement and connection is a possible and necessary antidote to the corruption of mendacity.

When we feel fragmented, isolated, and dislocated, all powerful symptoms of the experience of trauma, it is essential to find ways to struggle back to connection, with oneself and one’s community. Regardless of the source of the trauma, and whether its effects are individual or communal, the imperative to search for connections within oneself and with others is the same. Get up and dance, as though your life depended on it!

Not to belabor the discussion or images of sheep I’ve included in the last few posts, but I feel compelled to share this wonderful photo I have just received from a friend who was visiting and hiking on the Isle of Skye. It is complete serendipity that this sheep appears now in the exact landscape of the personal photo I chose for “Connections”, the title page of this website. How did this sheep climb into my photo, across time, but on the same hill?

In my experience, horizons change not just with location but with time. Here it is the agility of an animal at home in these hills that draws my attention. I can almost feel the rough grass under foot and the cool damp air around me. The horizon is close, personal, sensual.

As I approach a new decade, what was once the unimaginably distant horizon of becoming 80 years old now becomes this moment’s reality. All of those hills and peaks and cloud-driven moods of an abstract Scottish landscape are brought home to the particular: the close up curl of wool, the determined black face, the enviable center of gravity that ensures safe passage.

I guess it is that horizon of the close-up, the particular the drew me to the whimsical image of the “Form-Ewe-la-One” included at the end of the earlier post, “Mystery of ThroughLines.” Perhaps it is an oblique way of trying to understand my new age and the horizons it offers. That sheep on the red tractor? That’s me! Not just an image to amuse, but the reality of my new Kubota tractor that takes me across my fields to mow, to scrape, to move large objects. It may look funny to see a sheep, or an old lady, commanding the landscape in such a way, but it is my new horizon of belonging..

On the Isle of Skye sheep are immensely clever. Instead of complaining about the constant mist or downpour, they stand quite comfy in the lee of vertical rocks where they enjoy the view of rolling hills and pasture, dreaming of lunch. They softly gaze toward the distant Cullin peaks which remain forever mysterious, hidden in fog.

I traveled to the Sleat Peninsula in southern Skye two years ago, determined to learn more about the rocky path my grandfather’s family had taken to arrive in America in the 19th century. Unfortunately, handwritten archives and artifacts lodged at the Armadale Castle, a home of Clan Donald, gave few clues to Robin Macdonald’s grandparents’ journeys.

Instead it was on those rocky lanes of Skye, in the faces of the ubiquitous sheep, that I found essential connections to my family history and to my deepest sense of belonging. In my experience, when you touch a piece of yourself that transcends centuries, topography, genetic matching, you know you are touching one of your ThroughLines. It’s not a question, it’s a truth you can count on.