Helaine and I have been walking Sleeping Giant Mountain every few days for the last two months. It has made a difference in how we look and feel. I am still totally wasted by the time we get to the top, meaning there is still more benefit to be gained.
The gravel trail we walk is flanked by rocky rises and surrounded by woods. I stare into the woods all-the-time. There is something about them that struck me as different, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Now I have an idea what’s going on.
What we have is the opposite of the old adage, “can’t see the forest for the trees.”–an expression describing someone too involved in the details of a problem to look at the situation as a whole.
I grew up in the city. We didn’t have a whole lot of forests. OK–we had no forests. When I saw groups of trees, I saw them in photos or on TV. It was a singular, lush feature. I couldn’t see the trees for the forest.
When a forest fills your field-of-view, as it does on a TV screen or in the photo at the top of this entry, there is little detail. But when you’re inside the woods looking around, like on the Giant, each tree is sharply defined. That’s what had me confused. I never thought about the inherent intricacy of a forest.
It is the never ending detail that makes the trail at Sleeping Giant so interesting to walk and different day-to-day. Every step, every shift in the Sun’s angle, makes the trees look different.
I was thrown because I looked at the forest and saw sharp detail. Nearly 58 years on Earth and I had never stopped to see that existed.