Me and the Natural World
It all begins with an idea.
I want to tell you about a walk I went on and why it has rocked me.
There’s a great little hike near where I live in MidCoast Maine, a gentle stroll through a wooded spit of land that leads out to Squirrel Point and its tiny lighthouse. The hike is the little sister of a slightly longer hike up Bald Head Mountain, still an easy one but one that requires a snack and some water where Squirrel Point can happen on a whim with a promise of a cup of coffee afterwards. This day, Squirrel Point was the aim.
End of summer in Maine comes quick. One day you’re at the beach dodging green head flies; jonesing for a cold drink while poking around for the perfect shell to bring home (again) and the next day you’re hauling out your woolies. So when a warm clear Saturday in September offers itself up and you want so many things from the 2 hours you’ve got to spend, Squirrel Point is just the place.
My partner and I, we’ve made it out to the Point and we’re noticing the refurbishment that has happened since the spring when we were last out there. I walk over to the boathouse that tilts down into the river, sizing up the building’s precarious perch while trying to peek into a window on the port side. I push both hands against the sill as if to check for signs of rot and it’s as I lean in that I smell the old familiar scent of oil paint. My years of running a painting business come rushing back with a visceral force and I holler out, “it’s a new paint job. I can smell the oil paint.”
“What!” she says, “you smell something?” and that’s when I realize that something crazy just happened.
I had an accident nearly 10 years ago that included a head injury and have not been able to taste or smell since then. And now, on a day just as regular as any other, I had a smell and didn’t even notice the shock of it. It was like my sensory habit history jumped in and took it under its wing before I had a chance to notice and say holy fuck, I just had a smell!
I still don’t know what to make of this. Have I been having smells all along and because there wasn’t anyone to report it to, it didn’t get recorded? Is something changing in my brain with all this neurophysiology work I’ve been doing? I’ve felt as though something is cooking in me differently but not known what to make of it or where it’s going. What if smell comes back and brings its buddy, taste, with it? I’ll be a 70-year-old Humpty Dumpty but this one gets put back together again.
Some of the restoration work I’ve been doing involves claiming dominion over my thoughts. In the realm of I think therefore I am, Dr. Tara Swart presents a deluge of evidence to confirm that our thoughts are the most powerful ingredient to access our highest creative potential. In that Law of Attraction sort of way, we create our reality one thought at a time. So this past year I’ve been paying attention to what I think and what I say to myself about myself. I’m convinced that neural pathways are opening deep and wide and it turns out that this smelling thing may be part of the opening. I could not smell for the past 9 1/2 years and the other day, I smelled oil paint.
If nothing more comes of this life experiment I’ll still be both grateful and impressed. It’s been a doozy. Full of all sorts of adventures and mishaps, deaths and births, joys and sorrows. But I have to be honest, I want more. I’ve made a Desire Board, which she suggests, to guide my thoughts and decisions going forward. I’m going to do things and think things and maybe even smell things for the rest of my life and I would like a vote on what they are.
So I start with oil paint. And next comes writing about it. Then posting it here.
And suddenly I’ve signed up for a storytelling event near home.
What? Public speaking freaks me out.
Next?
If you’re in the mood to write, consider this a prompt. What would you like to do that you’d have to hang your bare ass out in order to do it?