Holy Holly Hammock

My journey of self-discovery continues.

When I walked outside this morning in Dunnellon, Florida, en route to my hike, I was beyond dismayed to discover the weather was gross: overcast, cold, and totally foggy. I had envisioned a warm, green, easy stroll through nature, but it seemed nature had disagreed. Disgruntled, I pulled on a long-sleeved shirt and started driving. And as I drove, almost magically, the fog burned off, the sun came out, the sky turned blue. By the time I got to Ross Prairie State Park, the weather couldn’t have been more perfect. I marveled at it, and wondered if I appreciated it more because I had been so disappointed beforehand.

Nature faked me out. Good one, nature.

I didn’t have too much time, because I needed to be in Tampa by 1 pm. The hike I’d picked, called Holly Hammock, was a 2.1-mile loop which I could easily do in an hour and a half. I changed back into a t-shirt, slathered on sunblock and set off. I wasn’t quite sure where the trailhead was - two loops began at this site - but I saw a spot that looked likely and sauntered into the woods. Blue blazes were painted onto trees at intervals, so it was clearly a marked trail. It was totally deserted; I was the only hiker. And it was beautiful. An easy dirt path allowed me to crane my neck at leisure, gazing at the greenery around me: tall oaks, ferns, pines, squirrels everywhere. It was lush, and warm, and verdant, and it was exactly what I had wanted out of this hike.

Yaaas!

As I walked along I suddenly burst out: “Hashem!” The beauty of the earth had spoken to me, and it manifested in this need to thank God for what he had made. It was a classic case of hitbodedut, defined by Wikipedia as “an unstructured, spontaneous and individualized form of prayer and meditation, popularized by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov.” The Hebrew word literally means “self-seclusion.”

Rebbe Nachman, the entry goes on, recommended forests and fields for hitbodedut. He wrote a gorgeous poem, incredibly set to music, which reveres the role of nature in prayer.

Know that each and every shepherd has his own melody.

Know that each and every blade of grass has its own unique song.

And from the songs of the grass, the song of the shepherd is created.

How beautiful​​, how beautiful​​ and fine when we hear their song.

It is very good to pray between them and praise God in joy.

And the song of the grass causes the heart to awaken and to long.

But that’s not the song I started singing. Instead I sang a Zusha song. The refrain fit perfectly into that green world. It flowed through me. I raised my arms to the sky and yelled, “THANK YOU, HASHEM!!!!!” He had given me exactly what I wanted.

I don’t know why God has made it so that I could find him in America and not Israel. It’s something I’ve thought about briefly over the past few weeks, but not in depth. I did, of course, spend a lot of time in Israel wondering why he wasn’t there, why I couldn’t see or feel him, why he felt so absolutely absent from my life.

I’m still not ready to talk about Israel. But it’s been so clear to me that God is here, with me, in a way he certainly was not when I was in his holy land. At least not for the past few years, despite desperate searching. I felt alone and forgotten there. And now here I am, far, far away from Zion, and here he is, showering me with blessings.

I assume he has his reasons. I hope I’ll one day know them. But you know what? I don’t even really care that much. It’s enough for me to know that he’s here, that he led me here, that I’m supposed to be here, that leaving Israel was right for me. It’s a powerful certainty, and I’m full of gratitude.

So I burst into song. I raised my face to the sky. I cried out to Hashem. I couldn’t help it.

I walked along for a while, filled to the brim with happiness. The woods were very pretty. The tree canopies framed the sun. Birds tweeted and butterflies fluttered.

Mmmmmm.

After a while, though, I started to get a bit suspicious about the trail I was on, because it didn’t seem to be looping around. I pulled out my phone to get more details about the trail, and using Google Maps, I soon realized that sure enough, I was not on the Holly Hammock trail at all. I guessed I had taken the other, longer loop.

I was really disappointed. Like, more than I should have been. Did it really matter? No. Obviously, I was loving the hike even though it was the wrong one. But it meant I had to turn around and walk back the way I came, and I wouldn’t do a loop at all, and I certainly wouldn’t have time to do the hike I had intended to do, the hike I had come all this way to do, and stayed at Dunnellon so I would be in proximity to it.

I don’t know why it bothered me so much. I wondered as I walked back to the starting point. Was I annoyed at myself because I hadn’t checked the trail before I started? Because I hadn’t carefully read the description and had thus blindly set off on any random trail without thinking about it? Had I finally made a mistake I would regret?

Why am I writing about this, you may wonder. Why am I constantly going on tangents. What am I even talking about at this point. I will tell you. Last night, I started thinking about how this trip has torn open the seams of my known world and catapulted me into the great beyond. And I had a slow but incredible realization: I haven’t hated myself since I started.

That sounds harsh. What I mean to say is that normally, I have some serious self-judgement issues. But the last few weeks, I haven’t had anything to berate myself for, no excuse or reason to be angry with myself. I don’t know if it’s that I’m not making mistakes, or if I’m just being more considerate of myself when I do.

You see, before my trip, it kind of felt like my consciousness was made up of two opposing teams: Abra and Anti-Abra. Abra would make a dumb decision and Anti-Abra would yell at her for it. Now it’s like we’re on the same team. Abra does something that has a negative result, and Alternative Abra reassures her everything is fine.

But that mechanism wasn’t exactly working this morning as I headed back to the trailhead and almost immediately found the correct one, which was, by the way, like 30 feet from where I had parked my car. I had less than half an hour left before I had to get on the road again; I’d have time to walk the trail for 15 minutes before I’d have to turn back. I wasn’t happy. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t enjoyed the hike, but somehow, that joy seemed lessened now that I knew it was the wrong hike, now that I wouldn’t get to complete this neat, perfect little loop. That was it: if I had found the right hike, it would have been perfect. But because I’d messed up, it wasn’t. It was just short of that.

And yet, Anti-Abra hadn’t returned. The system had been disrupted, somehow; it was reaching for a response but something was blocking it. I had made a mistake; I was annoyed; and . . . the next step in the sequence was missing. The normal completion of that mental cycle would have been me getting really pissed at myself, but it wasn’t happening. And yet I also wasn’t able to put the alternative sequence into play, and talk myself out of being upset.

WTF was happening?!?!

Something was going on. Something was changing.

And that brings me to my next point: Can I take the lessons of this trip back with me?

I love the person I am on this trip - confident, competent, adventurous, curious, friendly - I love this version of myself. This is the best of me. It’s the fullest, most complete, most fulfilled version of Abra. Me at my most. I’m expanding into all of my empty spaces. And I’m aware of it happening. I’m so fully inhabiting myself, my body, my senses.

Is that going to last? What’s going to happen to Optimal Abra when my trip ends?

Will all the knowledge and insights I’ve gained into myself, into my capabilities, carry forward into a life which is not full of adventure and newness?

I don’t have to face that question for a while, because after this trip there will be more trips, and more adventures - I’ve got them lined up. But what about when this year is over? Assuming I continue to grow and change, open and awaken, will this new self-understanding help me build a better Abra long-term?

I hope so. Actually, I think so. I do. I think once that door is opened, it can’t be closed again. Now that I have glimpsed my own best self, what I can be, I can’t unsee it. I can’t ever again believe that I’m not capable of it. Cat’s out of the bag.

To get back to the story (yeah, we’re still not done - God, I am wordy), I quickly started down Holly Hammock. At first it wasn’t as pretty as the other trail, so I tried to use that to justify my mistake. But then the path opened up into woods filled with thousands of these long, tall, thin, straight trees. They were breathtaking. I had seen them from the road the day before, and for some reason I had found them immediately captivating - they were so slender, I could fit my hands around them, and yet they had grown so very tall. Aesthetically, they were pleasing. And once more I was overcome with the need to praise the Lord.

Joy! Gratitude! Beauty! Platitudes! I was bursting with all of it.

Why is this so pleasing?

After I finished marveling and moved on, I came to the edge of a large sand pit. It wasn’t the most beautiful piece of landscape I’d ever seen, and yet it was appealing to the senses. There was something very peaceful about that wide open space. I sat down and looked and breathed and was. Once more, that feeling of completion, of fullness, of perfect awareness that I was in a moment of [insert word that I still haven’t coined], took hold of me.

Eventually I had to head back. But I was happier than I had been. I regretted not being able to finish the trail, but I felt I had squeezed enough enjoyment and philosophizing out of the experience to make up for my mistake.

I still haven’t fully resolved the issue. It’s just so odd to not have a reason to scold myself. The thing is that I’m actually living an amazing life right now. I’m crushing it. I always had endless excuses to hate myself for not going out, for not doing this or that. And now I’m doing it. Whatever I want to do, I’m doing it. And I have to give myself credit for that.

I have a lot more to say about this topic - about how this short but illuminating trip has affected me. It’s so far beyond what I had hoped. I couldn’t have even imagined it.

And with that delicious teaser, good night.