People are often taken aback when I talk about my time at The Mountain School. I don’t really blame them; if I met me, I would probably be surprised that I’d spent four months on a farm in Vermont when I was 16, too.
But I did. And I loved it.
I loved seeing the stars at night. I loved the community that my semester formed. I even grew to love the animals that horrified me at first. (I still don’t get too close to cows, goats, or chickens. I give them their space - we respect each other.)
I found out somewhat quickly that I have a knack for bushwhacking, which the dictionary defines as “cutting or pushing one's way through vegetation or across rough country, not following an established trail.”*
Put more simply, bushwhacking is when you grab a stick and use that stick to make a path for yourself in the woods.
This song has absolutely nothing to do with the essay, but it was in my head the whole time that I was writing it, and Frozen II is profoundly underrated.
Bushwhacking made me feel powerful. In a diary entry written during my time at The Mountain School, I compared bushwhacking to walking down the streets of Manhattan with a bunch of shopping bags, trying to make it through a sea of tourists on 5th Avenue. I stand by that metaphor. It truly fits the quintessential “city girl gone country” image that I had going for me at The Mountain School.
One of our first assessments during my semester involved identifying the trees we’d been studying in environmental science. Nature was quite literally our classroom. For our quiz, my small class of 10 or so walked outside the schoolhouse building with paper and pen and were instructed to write down the names of the trees that our teacher pointed at.
I don’t remember what grade I got on that quiz. Probably a B- honestly. The only tree species I remember, and can still identify today, is a paper birch. The trunk of the tree looks kind of like it’s wrapped in rough, jagged sheets of white paper that you could peel off easily.
What I do remember is the enormity and sturdiness of all those trees. I probably got distracted during the quiz because I was daydreaming and feeling philosophical about it all.
I surprisingly created a lot of nature metaphors and imagery during sessions with my life coach a few years ago. One of the metaphors we frequently came back to was the cave where I picture my "wisest self." I used to picture her hiding away from the rest of the world in a cave.
I once told my former coach that I pictured that cave as the same one where Katniss nourished Peeta to health in the Hunger Games. I pictured a similar cave while reading Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. (The one where Achilles and Patroclus lived, when they were training with Chiron.)
(Both excellent books. I feel like Katniss and Achilles would be at each other’s throats, but Peeta and Patroclus would get along just fine.)
There’s a coziness and warmth about my cave, even though it’s nestled in the heart of the wilderness.
The wilderness in my metaphor represents the outside world. The cave is where my real self took shelter while I reconciled my outer world with my inner world. A reconciliation that was only possible (and necessary) after realizing how much pretending I had been doing in everyday life.
Since creating that cave metaphor, I have ventured out more and more to explore the ‘wilderness.’ I have started pretending less. And I actively think about how to exist out here in the wild, and show up as my real, ‘wisest’ self that I picture in that cave, without a) actually retreating back into that cave or b) staying in the wild and pretending.
More plainly, I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can be myself out in the world, instead of just performing all day and becoming myself again once I’m cozy on the couch again.
How can we show up as our real selves in a world where we constantly feel like we have to armor up in more ways than one? How can we show up as ourselves in a world that often explicitly demands a version of us that is not who we actually are? Does ‘being yourself’ even matter?
Inside this extended metaphor I’ve built, where I live in this cave and venture out into the wild — I picture myself bushwhacking to create new paths.
My coach and I used to talk about how to know when you’re heading in the right direction when there is no exact path to follow. What does it feel like when you know you’re going the ‘right’ way, and making the ‘right’ choices? How do you tap into that intuition? How do you know what to do?
I picture myself walking from tree to tree.
I think about the people I meet along the journey, the places I encounter, and the opportunities that I come across as trees.
Some are long-lasting - sturdy and rooted, and strong.
Some are temporary - flimsy and susceptible to breaking with the right gust of wind in a storm.
Some trees will be swiftly uprooted - like the one I studied for my final science project at The Mountain School. At first, I thought it must have been an old tree. But eventually, I realized with the help of my teacher that it had to have been a somewhat young tree, for all the roots to have come up in the way that they did.
Glennon Doyle introduced the idea of touch trees to me when I read Untamed.
A Touch Tree is one recognizable, strong, large tree that becomes the lost one’s home base. She can adventure out into the woods as long as she returns to her Touch Tree — again and again. This perpetual returning will keep her from getting too far gone….Now, when I feel lost, I remember that I am not the woods. I am my own tree. So I return to myself and reinhabit myself.
-Glennon Doyle, Untamed
I am not the woods. I am my own tree. I do believe that.
BUT ALSO for the purpose of my metaphor (my wisest self being out in the woods after resting in her cave), I think that we can have multiple touch trees?
People, places, and things that make us feel like ourselves and help us feel connected to our real selves as we venture through this wild world.
The texture of these trees feels like home. They are new and yet so familiar.
Like sitting down for coffee with a new friend, and suddenly feeling like you’ve known them all your life.
Or reading a book that makes you feel instantly seen.
Or listening to a podcast that somehow makes you feel like you’re at an intimate dinner party with your closest friends.
When I reach those trees, I want to lean on them, relish in their sturdiness, and stay awhile.
I want to stop being worried about when I’ll ever find a tree like this again. I don’t want to rush off to the next tree in search of something greater or worry that I’m not moving fast enough on my journey.
I want to pay attention to how present I feel in my body when I’m walking through the forest. If I feel disconnected from myself physically, that is usually a pretty good indicator that I am in the wrong neck of the woods.
Sometimes it’s tempting to stay in places where we don’t feel like ourselves. It’s easy to shove down the discomfort in the moment. I get it. I did that for many moments and many years.
But here’s the thing. When I’m in the right neck of the woods, I feel grounded, present, and free. I feel peace unlike I’ve ever known, and all I want to do is stop and enjoy that feeling and be right where I am with myself and those trees.
For even the sturdiest trees won’t stand forever. If life has taught me anything, it’s taught me that.
So I myself am going to spend my wild, precious life finding the trees that feel like home, instead of staying in the wrong neck of the woods for fear that I may never find my touch trees.
The basic definition of bushwhacking is simply to make one’s way in the woods.
Nature provides us with such a powerful example of what it’s like to make your way in uncharted territory, at whatever pace is necessary.
Nature also provides us with many examples of how necessary it is to be patient.
We can’t rush the flowers in the winter. We can’t rush the sun in the spring.
We don’t rush the leaves as they change colors in the fall.
We literally can’t. And we likely wouldn’t if we could.
Don’t rush yourself either, on whatever journey you’re on.
Go towards the things that make you feel alive and bushwhack with gusto, but don’t sprint! You’ll probably trip on a stick that someone else discarded while they were out bushwhacking.
There is both urgency and patience needed, as we find our way in this world. We have all the time in the world, and we have no idea how much time that will be. So don’t rush, but don’t wait forever either.
One last thing, before I head out to *bushwhack —
Lean on your touch trees. Lean. On. Your. Touch. Trees.
*That was a joke. The Mountain School was fun, but I am a city girl living in New York, and the closest I will ever get to living in the woods is taking a weekend trip to the Hudson Valley.
We were never meant to do any part of this life alone, and we are certainly not meant to navigate the wilderness alone.
If you’re considering making a big change, or even just curious about what it would be like to take your life in a new direction, I’m always here to chat.
You don’t have to know what’s next to know that it might be time to explore a new part of the woods.
Nothing has to be ‘wrong’ on paper. If something feels off, then it’s off — and I highly recommend spending some time figuring out what that something is, before the unrest bubbles over. Burning your life down and starting anew can look surprisingly glamorous in movies, but it’s not the only way to change your life.
You don’t have to wait until it feels impossible to stay where you are before you make a change.
Further Reading
I originally wrote this essay a few weeks ago before seeing a musical called Redwood this past weekend. It’s now been a year and a half since I originally published this, and I have seen Redwood 3x.
Read about this musical’s profound impact on me HERE. (And when I say profound, I mean it. Like, talk about big life changes. Hint - it involves a cross-country move.)
We have a LOT to learn from the trees.
