Get Lost

And give those big questions room to roam

I had a decision to make. A big one. The kind of decision that fills you will dread. I can’t remember what it was because that is the arc of all big decisions — they’re so large they eclipse themselves.

The weather was warm, I remember that much. Cars on the street were sparse as if people understood I needed a wide berth; I had things to work out. The season was winter, but this was California, so it was warm. I went out in a T-shirt and shorts.

The present moment chased me down the street, but I was in sixth gear and my head was all over the place and I didn’t know where I was going. When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me to go north if I got lost; the mountains were north. I went to the mountains.

A miraculous thing happened.

I journeyed onto the trail and immediately sank into a quicksand of thought. Bees kissed the juicy middle of sunflowers, BluJay’s hopped from branch to branch, houses shrank while the area surrounding them expanded, then eventually shrank too, but I was in my head, lost in quicksand. Everything shrank while I grew large, especially my thoughts, which coalesced into larger, disjointed versions of themselves, clumping together and clouding my vision. Footprints in the dirt, my footprints, trailed behind me but my ascension was hazy. The trail rounded a bend. I walked faster. The hard decision I needed to make jumped out of a nearby bush and I stumbled; I hadn’t seen it coming, I’d been so lost in thought.

The sun grew in size and temperature. I pondered the passage of time while swatting incoming thoughts. My shadow fell behind and looped around my ankles, finding a new place in the dirt to stand. The bees on the beds of sunflowers disembarked. They cut past me and I watched their voyage over a nearby hill. Something eclipsed the sun, so I looked up. Two red-tailed hawks circled overhead. A brush rabbit rustled the dead leaves to my left; its white cottontail poked out of a drooping clump of sunflowers. An Australian Shepperd zipped past me out of nowhere and bounded after the rabbit. Excited paws crunched the brittle leaves and bees leaped out of their sunflower beds and the rabbit raced away. I heard a deep voice call the Shepperd back. The owner appeared and we exchanged a brief greeting. I carried on up the mountain. Before I did, I looked behind. The houses, streets, cars, and trees were so tiny they’d become one large thing — a carpet unfurled beneath the foot of the mountain. I took it in. The dry, brown landscape was familiar to me, what I knew California to be. I got lost in its beauty.

I stepped out of myself for a moment and asked the guy on the trail why he’d come to the mountain.

Because it was north, he told me. Because he liked being with BluJay’s and bees and sunflowers, even if the sunflowers were dying. Because he lost himself in the moment here.

Ah, I said.

I can’t remember what big decision I needed to make that day. I think I went to the mountain to avoid it. Rabbit’s rustling and bees buzzing and red-tailed hawks soaring helped me get lost for a while, which is what I wanted, but when I came to, I realized I’d gotten so lost I’d found myself in the present moment. I found the answer to my hard decision there. It seemed less large now.

I climbed farther up the mountain and got lost some more.