Into the Water: Stepping Past the Edge of Fear
Hither at Goalcast nosotros're constantly striving toward self-improvement and personal fulfillment; while this can exist a deeply gratifying practice, similar
Here at Goalcast we're constantly striving toward cocky-improvement and personal fulfillment; while this can be a securely gratifying practice, similar anything else, it comes with its own ready of challenges — including overcoming inherent fears we've been holding onto.
So with that in listen, we thought, why not — on the scariest week of the year — endeavour the self-deemed incommunicable: face our biggest, smallest or most nagging fear and have the right steps to overcome it. Welcome to #GoalcastFearChallenge.
The water is high along the Clark Fork, spilling over into the floodplain. I've worn my highest condom boots, but h2o trickles over their tops in a few places. When I put my foot downwardly, I never know how far it's going to keep going—perchance far enough to land me on my ass in a freezing, swollen stream.
I stop and sit on a user-friendly log to upend my boots. Gazing upwardly at that amazing, miraculous heaven, I'm captivated by the greenish of new cottonwood leaves against the blue. The sweet scent of the buds is fading and will exist replaced past the smell of new earth smell and the warm perfume of spring shrubs in bloom.
Hiking in wide arcs through this river-bottom in bound is one of my favorite things to do. But this year, nosotros've had so much snowfall, still piled upwards in cornices drooping ominously over the surrounding peaks—followed by months of steady leap rain. The rivers are loftier, spilling over and flushing out the debris of years past, eventually working their way back to the female parent river.
The beavers are having a difficult fourth dimension keeping up with the constant influx. They're cutting trees similar crazy, leaving piffling piles of wood shavings effectually every turn in the trail. If you come here at night, you can come across them hard at work.
Finally, I weave betwixt a few wispy cedars, laissez passer by a red-colored patch of dogwood, and achieve the river. The Clark Fork is a sight to behold, running only a few anxiety below the height of the bank. My center catches a swatch of white, the broadly-spread tail of a baldheaded eagle, perched on an angled snag poking out of the river, midstream. The eagle sits quietly, and then begins to plough, hopping awkwardly on the sloping log, exposing every side of its big, dark-brown torso to the dominicus.
*
Today, a thick layer of fog has smothered the valley. Finally, in late afternoon, the fog lifts off, above the trees, and then the dry out chocolate-brown hills, and so the mountains beyond. Sun filters in, sending great shafts of low, winter low-cal through the cottonwoods. The winter sunday is deceptive—information technology's nevertheless frigid.
Dressed in my purple long-johns and matching snow pants, ankle-length down parka, 2 hats, and my warmest double-layer mittens, I turn left at the "T" in the trail and climb over a downed cottonwood. The outlet stream is covered with a thin layer of water ice littered with cast-off leaves and there is heavy frost on the overhanging ruby-twig dogwoods. Finally, I reach the mirror-still beaver ponds, inexplicably, still unfrozen. I terminate and sit on a silvery log which was once an upright tree that provided shade on a warm August afternoon, but the beavers had other ideas.
Long earlier the river comes into view, I hear it—but I take never heard this sound before. I am the lucky witness to the first day of freeze-up. Hundreds of meter-bore, spinning plates of water ice in a dizzying variety of geometric shapes whirl in the current, peel off, and drift in to the edges of the river banking concern. I hear the chhhhhskkkkkk sound of ice existence shaved as the spinning rafts skim the rim of the river, creating a single furrow of crystals, then passing to the adjacent bulging bank, and the adjacent.
At the end of this single short day, when the sun flees and the temperature drops, the rafts of ice will become stuck in their journey through this obstruction class, slowly freezing into oddly shaped polygons, cracks, and fissures. On some very placidity dark, the cracks and fissures will be hidden by a thick layer of snow, and the river's voice will be hushed to a murmur. A sound that maybe but a canis familiaris could hear. I will come back, maybe even tomorrow, merely the river will exist different, inverse, quieter, less alive, never the same over again.
*
Spring has returned, the sun has returned, and the sap has returned, flowing up the xylem vessels into the cottonwood branches and down to their tips. I pinch off one gluey, resinous bud, hold it to my nose. It's intoxicating scent is my favorite in the known world.
I'grand continuing at the river's edge, staring into the mysterious depths of what looks similar a modest tributary. To explore the tangled forest on the other side, I have to get across the water, and I don't know how deep the aqueduct is. I don't know what the other shore is like—whether I'd struggle getting out of the water, or if I could easily step out onto a rocky shore.
In the forest, there are dozens of downed trees from decades of windstorms. What if I tripped and broke a leg? Who would hear me over the blitz of the water? Who would expect for me in this place with no trails, where the trees and brush are and then thick you lot cannot become an idea of the island's dimensions?
*
Nosotros place impossible demands on ourselves. I am terribly afraid of heights, so I climbed in the world'southward highest mountains. I wasn't ever certain that I wanted to be a nurse and yet I became one. Over the past twenty-5 years, I've helped bring in new lives, relieve lives, and end lives. Sometimes we surprise ourselves. Just, take a moment. Expect at the evidence. Ask yourself if maybe yous take stretched yourself equally far equally you lot can. Larn to love and have yourself in the very moment you are living.
As Mary Oliver proposes, "what will yous practise with your one wild and precious life?" I believe in living the best life I can while gradually learning to surrender all command of the upshot. Because unbearably distressing things cross your path—a marriage disintegrates, a lover betrays you, a person y'all intendance most suffers, or even dies. But, and so do miracles—beloved, and nascence, and hope, and this annual season of renewal that we tin can count on, no matter what.
I've wanted to explore this area for most three years, just I've been afraid. I've been waiting for a partner to share the experience, someone I can trust to lookout my dorsum—just no partner has materialized, despite my bumbling attempts at putting myself out there with conviction, taking chances, and following the Law of Attraction, which I now suspect might be possibly just another form of victim-blaming. Sometimes, the thing we recall we need the nearly is forever elusive, proving, in essence, that we can alive without it.
Standing at the river's edge, I realize that I don't take all that much to fear. The water temperature has come and it no longer feels similar melting water ice. I'm wearing Tevas, not rubber boots that could fill with water and pull me down. What'southward the worst that could happen? I could lose my footing and autumn in. Get wet. Well, I can swim.
One time I cross to the other side, I tin cull the best spot to haul myself out. If information technology's too muddy on the contrary bank, I can drift downstream, scramble out on the gravel bar, and pick my way back up to the island. I can explore the interior of the wood as far equally I'm comfortable, and I can stay there as long equally I like. Until the sunday goes down, even.
I footstep into the h2o.
Source: https://www.goalcast.com/water-stepping-past-edge-fear/