I love hiking.  The hiking seed was planted within me by one of my Soul Sisters years ago.  She’s a Libra Sun and one of the sweetest persons I love and cherish.  Since then, I’ve been determined to hike and explore areas surrounding me.  When I come upon a clearing during a hike, I pause, look around, look up, deep breath in, release, smile, and continue forward.

In the forest or woods, a clearing is created in one of two ways. Deliberately or naturally. Forest boundaries or clearings occur either where trees can’t grow or where they’ve all died. This could be due to many natural conditions and processes, such as landslides, floods, beavers, fire, heavy snow loads, avalanches, insects., wind, and rot. Often these factors work together.

A landslide, when everything in your life seems to slide away and you have no control, will cause you to lose your footing and you’ll try to grab a hold of a branch of faith and sometimes the branch isn’t strong enough and you end up sliding along with the land. The floods are heavy emotions that will consume and take you under but you don’t drown. The beavers, nagging thoughts of negativity, will gnaw continuously until there is nothing left for them to feed upon. The fire, passion, will burn and if you aren’t careful it too will consume.  The heavy snow load, the coldness of the heart, will turn you away from everything and everyone because now you’re in a mode of preservation. This will eventually lead to an avalanche. The insects will come and eat away any and everything that is left. The wind will blow away the remaining debris and then the rot sets in.

This is the natural process of the formation of a clearing.  The noun clearing is a good way to describe an open place in the midst of dense growth. Being in an open place in the midst of dense growth can be a challenge but coming upon a clearing while on a hike is so refreshing and the view….beautiful. The path is now clear. There is peace because you can see clearly what’s ahead. The feeling of victory is present because you survived the clearing process. You’ve now gained wisdom from the experience.  Keep hiking.

Embrace the process of clearing.