THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE continued
Katherine Smith
Kate Smith is the clinical herbalist and health
coach of Made Whole. She grew up in the
bamboo forests of Pinebluff, and is back in
the Sandhills after a decade living in Alaska,
Ireland, and Appalachia.
Through
The
Grapevine
All things Natural Living
THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE continued
Full Well
by Katherine Smith
Every morning since the election, I’ve been
walking. When my alarm goes off, I pull on my
sweats and hoodie, pour a mug of coffee, leave
my phone untouched on my desk, and step
outside. Sometimes I walk for five minutes
down the block, the 5 a.m. moonlight bobbing
over my shadow. Sometimes, on the weekends,
I walk for an hour in the sunrise, winding
through the Campbell House Gardens, the
Weymouth Center’s equine trails, to my
Memaw’s, and back home through downtown
Southern Pines. But every morning, I go.
I have tried many morning routines—
contemplation, stream of consciousness
writing, yoga. But they all keep me inside my
home, where worries and the to-do list tug
anxiously at my sleeve. They all eventually feel
like chores; something I’m doing for a greater
goal, and not for their own sake. It’s only a
week or two before I abandon them.
Walking is different. The motion of moving
my body occupies my mind just enough to
quiet it. And when my mind is quiet, content
to inspect a moving, ever-changing landscape,
I can pray, and think, and hear my creativity.
I walk because I enjoy it for its own sake.
But recently, I realized that I am looking for
something every time I go. I am looking for
doves and cardinals and sparrows crowding a
bird feeder. For centuries-old homes dressed
in Christmas lights. For ivy surging up a
longleaf pine where a murder of crows argue
amongst themselves. For sunrise emblazoning
a single, yellow-leafed tree in a field of straw
and dormancy. I am looking for life.
It’s what Julia Cameron, author of The
Artist’s Way, would call “filling the well.”
“Think magic, think delight, think fun...Do
not think duty,” she writes. “In filling the well,
you follow your sense of the mysterious, not
your sense of what you should know more
about. A mystery can be very simple: if I follow
this road, not my usual road, what will I see?
Changing a known route throws us into the
now.”
I’ve never been comfortable in the now. As
a Type A person, I’m comfortable with routine,
organization, and carefully plotted steps to 5
year goals. But 2020 fundamentally changed
me. It acquainted me with the fragility of life,
the permanence of death, and the reality that
my time here, and my loves ones’ time here,
is so very short. It demolished the identity I
had rooted in my control. And it completely
changed where and how I experience joy.
I’ve started doing really impracticable things.
Having never surfed before, I bought a
surfboard, and have spent every free day since
on the ocean. I’ve been listening to Christmas
music since May, and decorated for Christmas
the day after Halloween. I read fiction novels
THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE con't. next column THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE con't. next column
until late at night, and in the morning, I
walk. None of these things are productive
or practical. But they make me feel alive, by
which I mean, they make me feel joyful and
free.
This New Year, we examine our resolutions
with suspicion. Can I really commit to
exercising when the gyms may close again?
Can I really expect myself to stop eating sugar
when I’m so stressed out? We all are fresh from
witnessing the pillars of our control tremble.
So here is my New Year’s prescription for you.
If you do nothing else this year, go looking for
life. Find something that you love, for its own
sake, and fill your internal well to the brim.
Because no matter the darkness, if we seek
Life, we will find it. And that makes living a
little bit lighter. ☐
No. 141 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. p.33