The busyness of Life

The most rewarding aspect of living and working in a world biosphere reserve and world heritage site is being able to get lost in it when the chance presents itself.

Contrary to what most people would say about areas such as the Serengeti and Ngorongoro and being able to get lost in such a visited place, there are areas where few tourists ever go and roads that few people ever traverse.

And also, can we ever get lost unless we allow the mind to live outside of the known?

The Masais don't have roads. They go where the pastures are green and the landscape allows them. There is no restriction on a path they choose, in their minds or hearts. They remember their roads by rocks and stones, a twisted tree, the horizon and the dust of the ground. Roads are the creation of a "civilized" race that has learned to live so curbed. Our fearful minds need support to steer us in the right direction. Not a wrong turn here, not a divergence there. Fearing getting lost and perhaps thereby, being found?

I haven't unfortunately embarked on any such great travels or travails. But I have seen some beautiful panoramas that made me feel like I was a part of them, their existence, their moment in evolution. A part of that blue sky and the grey, cotton fluffed clouds. That my breath mingled with the air pregnant with moisture. I was a part of the dust so red and a soil so black and heavy. I was a part of the hills and their solitude. A part of the wildebeest and their smells and the cheetah's resting so beautifully, unexpectant of any passer by in the shade of the acacia. I was a part of the wisdom and the naiveté. A part of life.

There are stories buried in the sands of this land. There are footsteps one can follow. Hidden in the sounds of silence are the whispers of evolution. There is an aloneness but no loneliness, a feeling that in being lost, there is a discovery. There is love. A love for not a person or a thing or a place. A love for the force so humbling. You are love. There is beauty in being away from the known and seeing something that only you will see. The stare of the Elands at the water, the notice of the Wildebeest a-grazing. The purple flowers that have bloomed in the recent rain and the remains of death on the soil. No one else will see the flowers in that moment, in that second. No one else will see the same Eland with the same stare. No one will hear the gnus the same way and no one will see the column of rain on the horizon from my spot. No one will see the keyhole of light in the clouds or the way the mountains and hills looked in that moment. Because tomorrow it will be different. There will be death and thus renewal. The land is alive. And it makes me alive.

There is great pleasure in not knowing and in the not knowing is the discovery of everything; in the alone path is the company of realization.

It is in the uninhabited land where there is the busyness of life.