April Ambles: Order
Reflections of a Philosophical Forager — Day 2
All my life I have craved order: order in my surroundings, order in events unfolding, order in my thoughts.
Instead of order I have been met mostly with chaos: a jumble of random objects in my path, events happening all around me, too many thoughts to process before even more thoughts arrive.
Life is not orderly. It is messy, unruly, unpredictable, wild. We might devote hours to lining things up only to find that the wind has swept through — or a willful child, or the neighbor’s dog — and scattered our work to all corners of the room, the yard, the workshop.
We think we can decide where things will rest, and when we will deal with them, but things have a mind of their own, and we…we are no more in control of them than they are of us.
Today I gather baskets for guest foragers to roam the woods with me. We will step over sticks and branches, over streams and mossy rocks, over muddy patches in the road and gullies that have been carved out in recent rains.
We will come home to the joyful chaos of the kitchen, and turn the bounty of our baskets into a meal to savor as the night descends. There will be dishes on all the counters and flour on the floor, everyone will be talking at once, and the cats will be weaving in and out of our legs, waiting impatiently for the first crumb to fall. Jackets will be tossed on chairs, empty bottles will build up, and damp dishtowels will multiply as the evening wears on.
If life were to remain in order, none of this magic would occur. Chaos is a byproduct of creativity, of daring to do. A clean house is the sign of a wasted life.
And yet, for this one moment before my guests arrive, I delight in the order of a line of baskets, perched on the edge of my porch, waiting to be whisked away into the woods to be filled with treasure. The order is fleeting, the rest to be celebrated.
For more amblings from the author, check out Child of the Woods: An Appalachian Odyssey.
