Imagine. It's a very, very, very windy day. You are out in a kayak, alone, bracing against the wind, moving along with all the elements balanced upon every moment. And then there is one moment of breath-taking, awe-inspiring on the verge of frightening motion and sound when the ocean's surface breathes its rising and falling of an outgoing tide and falls away from a hidden rock, and the wind shears across it with a violence so immense that all you can do is take in the sound like having your ear forced down against one second of sizzling oil in a hot pan when a drop of water hits it and all chaos breaks loose, like someone going "PSST" into your ear as loudly as they can, for one rude-wrenching second like the sound when you disconnect a hose from an air compressor and a burst if air seethes against your eardrum with painful ferocity.
Why do I write this here?
Because it is a moment I always remember when I am thinking of venturing into some new space of experience. Remembering that first moment that you may never, really, even get used to remembering.
Because I remember the first time I experienced this sound and this amazing moment when there was so much chaos and power and energy and violent beauty packed into that moment that it was impossible to step back and realize that beauty because everything within me was suddenly focused on all that chaos and power and violence...
But in this case, and in many cases, it usually doesn't happen just once, and after a while you begin to be able to anticipate it, and then you can begin to see it and hear it and experience it with a more observational objectivity, and see its beauty.
But there is that first time.
There is that acknowledgement of being caught off-guard by something beyond what had been up until that moment your wildest imagination.
And there's a strange phenomenon about this - many times, these sort of first moments make you want to discover so many more first moments...
To my mind, that's what journeying is about.
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