Journal Entry 3: What I’m Reading -

I just started a new eBook on my Kindle yesterday. I was bored and typed in “nature” on the Kindle search bar and it came up with “Finding Your Way in a Wild New World” by Martha Beck. I bought this book on a whim a year ago and it was buried under all the other Kindle purchases I’d made.

As soon as it popped up I remembered why I bought it. The first scene in the book, she described a moment of intense danger. She was caught between a rhinoceros and her baby on a safari trip in South Africa. The author described all the thoughts that ran through her head of her midlife situations and how this one moment—facing danger in the natural world—gave her the ‘ah ha’ moment of her true nature and what she wanted out of life—if she was to get out of this alive, that is.

She wrote about what she learned from mystics, medicine men and wise women of indigenous cultures all over the world and how we can learn from them as we become “wayfinders” on our own path in search of meaning from our own lives.

I’m only a few chapters in, but enjoying it and her witty humor.

Have you ever had an ‘ah ha’ moment of realization while facing danger in nature? What did it reveal to you about yourself?

I’ve had several over my life—usually involving close calls with rattlesnakes or angry/stressed cattle busting out of a corral corner. Being face to face in close quarters suddenly with a rattlesnake brings a new inner consciousness over you as you stare into each others’ eyes, waiting for the moment one of you can safely back away.