I was driving home after a quick session of paperwork and training
with Buffalo Wild Wings, when I decided to call my mom. Her voice crackled over
the Bluetooth speakers in my car as we exchanged quick life updates. My GPS, Debra,
tried to announce the upcoming turns but her robotic British voice quickly
became buried under my conversation. Two wrong turns later (sorry Debra), I found
myself in a small parking lot with a playground on the right and a tangle of
trees on the left. My heart began to do a happy dance, and I could almost taste
the pine needle-y tang of the woods. “Hey mom, so, I wasn’t paying attention
and I’m like at a park or something? I’m gonna go have an adventure, bye!” my
voice rushed excitedly. After hanging up and stepping out of the car, my enthusiasm
wavered. The forest looked pretty shallow and was littered with picnic tables
and fire pits. Despite the run-down, low-budget park vibes I was getting, it
was still just a park. Maybe not an adventure. I decided to trudge deeper through
the trees, crunchy leaves and springy detritus cushioning my footsteps. I found
a murky stream and a bridge traveling over it, but the bridge was blocked off
for construction. I was disappointed but decided to follow the length of the
stream, hoping it would lead somewhere. After a few minutes of nothing, the
river widened its mouth into a lake, a sparkling cliché with blue waters
nestled by trees. I giggled out loud like a crazy person and finger-gunned the
heavens, thanking God or life or whomever for this discovery. There was a massive
tree that had fallen on the shoreline, its roots on land but the trunk and
branches stretching horizontally into the center of the lake. It looked sturdy
enough for a 21-year-old trapped in the body of a prepubescent male, so I clambered
up the roots and awkwardly crab walked sideways across the trunk. When I reached
the middle of the tree, I looked around and realized I was smack dab in the
middle of a glittering lake, surrounded by budding trees and birdsong. After a
month of friendship problems, unnecessary drama, mental health struggles, and more
life lessons than I was able to handle, there was suddenly a pause. A silence. There
was just a lake, just a fallen tree, just a forest. A piece of litter floating
sadly but amicably under my right foot. My phone creating an uncomfortable bump
in my jeans pocket. Birds spreading gossip in treetops. Normally when I go on
adventures I try to uncover some hidden truth about myself, mining greedily for
wisdom in my subconscious so that later I can brag about my findings. I had the
urge to find meaning in sitting in the middle of a lake, treating myself like
my own therapy patient, asking myself in a faux-sympathetic voice, “Well, how
do you feel?” But I stopped myself, thinking, “Maybe this doesn’t mean
anything. Maybe it doesn’t need to. Just exist.” It sounds pretty simple, but
to an anxious 21-year-old with not many friends and a tendency to overthink, it
was the biggest revelation. I turned off my phone (after some shameless selfie
taking), lay back on the tree trunk, and breathed in the cold, bright air. The sun
made blinding patterns on the lake, and a hesitant breeze mussed up its glossy
surface. I didn’t analyze anything or try to feel anything, just watched the
world unfold artfully around me. There were times when anxious thoughts
slithered into my mind, and I didn’t try to block them or correct them. I let
them exist, giving them validity but not truth. When I felt ready, I did my
awkward crab walk back down the tree trunk and stepped back into the forest, refreshed
and content. I cried in my car in my apartment’s parking lot, not wanting to strap
my burdens on again. But then I realized that place wasn’t going anywhere. The
park wasn’t some magic little detour away from “real life,” it was real life in
its truest existing form. Things just existing, growing, dying, breathing,
living. And if I didn’t need to assign meaning in a place of intense beauty (with
so much potential for symbolism and interpretation), maybe I didn’t need to
assign meaning to anything. Maybe, at least sometimes, I could just leave life
alone and exist in it. I still feel bogged down and stressed out, as every
college kid does, as every human does, but there is no judgment in it. I made
some wrong turns from work and found a tree on a lake in the woods. Nature has
no binary system— no good or bad, no success or failure. No judgment. And if
nature is the purest form of existence, and I want to exist, then I’m not going
to try and live a certain way to appease myself, my friends, or societal norms.
I don’t need to assign meaning. I don’t need to label myself as a good or nice person—bear
with me here, I know that is A Sentence. Nature isn’t good-hearted, and it
certainly is not nice. Some people love it, some people hate it, and it keeps
existing regardless. I realized all this in the middle of a lake and said “Oh!”
out loud into the brisk afternoon sunlight, before chuckling to myself with the
simplicity and relief of it all. And now I exist. I have officially welcomed
myself into the world. I am so excited.
