Branch And Flow

If you have been a reader of this blog for any period of time, you know that one of the great struggles of my life has been the fact that for the last 11 years I have been a number of states removed from where I actually want to be - The Ranch - and even longer years - 24 if you have your calendar handy - since it was more than a 30 minute drive.  This has been a constant background theme to my life, this wanting to be in one place - nay, feeling that one is called to one place - while being away somewhere else. 

It leaves a hole in your soul, given enough time and energy.  I understand that not everyone has this particular sense of being tied to one place, especially a place which one may not have been at or around for years - but for me at least, this place is a refuge from the world, the sort of thing that (living in an urban area as I currently do) I see people crying out for in theory, while in practice all they do is continue to double down on a life style that is resource intensive, rather full of people, and pushing out the darkness, silence, and nature that they proclaim they want more of - in other words,  the hypocrisy of acting one way while proclaiming another.

This thought of taking a different path became bothersome to me over the last week - for various and sundry reasons the need to be back here has become more intensive, not less, over the more recent years and has weighed heavily on me.  It weighed heavily on me as I walked earlier this week and came across The Creek.

The Creek, as I have mentioned, does not itself run across our property (would that it did) but is on the deeded road to our property - thus, it is something that we will always have access to.  It is a creek similar to the one I grow up near as a child:  not particular deep or full, running across stones and mud and gravel, filled with blackberries on either side drinking in the moisture, under tall oaks and pines, inhabited by water skimmers and crawdads (if these are called Water Skaters and Crayfish by you, it is not so among us rural peasantry).  It has a small island accessible from the road with a couples of skips across stones and a gravel bar, inhabited by a lone pine and ferns and some sort of flowering grass and the resident blackberry (now cut out):

As I sat there, looking around and listening to the stream burbling away and feeling (as I often do) this sense of being conflicted, I happened to pay attention to the culverts you see there - three in total, running the water under the stream and into the pool until it makes its way around the island.  Three separate entrances leading to two flows.  And then I looked downstream:

After the island, there is only one stream heading out.  The flows are joined and one cannot tell what the difference is between the two.

In this, I suddenly realized, is wisdom.

Streams separate and flow in different directions, sometimes in ways and paths we had not intended.  But at some point, they come back together as well and from that point on, it is impossible to tell the difference.

Plan, yes.  Do what you need to, of course.  But do not surrender the belief that every stream, every branch, leads away from where you are trying to get to.  The stream continues to flow on.