A Triangle is The Most Stable Object in The Universe - Part 2

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Mile 3, or 4. We make it to the first trail junction and stop.

“Anyone feeling hot in their shoes?”

No answer. I feel my feet and search the faces of the group, it’s hard to tell.

“Let me know…this is a good time to stop a blister before it makes trouble,”

Everyone seems well. I haven’t heard a gunshot in the last half hour. I think Dan was right about the hunters tapering off mid-day. I still feel cautious,

“So…if you move off trail make some noise,”

We scatter to find places to crouch and pee. I rustle leaves kicking left and right, and pull my orange hood over my head. Turning back, I see four of us behind trees or in bushes. I notice the light shining through Clara’s elder woman bouffant, white, iridescent…

Please, anyone with a gun, don’t shoot her.

I hang back and take a lot of time waiting for others to return before closing the circle. Donald and Chip are having a snack, Anna and Dan drink water and stretch, Janet looks ready to go, Clara digs in her fanny pack.

“For our fearless leader,”

“Thanks Clara,”

She hands me a sack of chocolate covered nuts.

I think we are going to be okay.

The sun is delightful, Anna takes photos ...these are good signs, the group is warming up. The fist in my solar plexus starts to let go.

We wind through ravines and an old cemetery with two unmarked gravestones. We play inside a hollow tree. Chip and I share chocolates. The scenery opens, painting two gold ridge lines...I feel the smile on my face. The two hills fold together leaving a narrow thoroughfare.

The group hikes down the side of the first ridge - leafy, slick, full of switchbacks and hidden rocks. At the bottom, a sign points us in two directions, one arrow aims straight up the cliff ridge, the other points between the ridges and up the other side. We pause, check our feet, and a map and unanimously decide to head across the gap and up the other ridge side. The trail is easy to find.

Up the ridge, into the sun, and down the other side, we enter a forest valley filled with swampy trees and low vines. I become curious. The trail sign points into a rushing stream, with no obvious way to cross. The sign leans on its side. I wonder if it has been shift by the wind.

I take the lead to search for an access point. Someone has laid out a log. There is no other way without wading through - we have to cross on the log. I start to forage across and turn around. No one is following me. The group turns left. I retreat and back up to the sign which points across the creek.

Oh, here is another path,

The trail to the left is wide, easy and flat, no crossing the water needed, only simple left. Janet moves quickly ahead on this path, I jog to catch up with her.

“Hey. I think we need to cross the creek back here."

Janet slows, but doesn’t stop.

“Janet let’s stop.”

"When in doubt Allison, follow the obvious."

My face is hot.

“Sometimes.”

Janet said nothing.

The group caught up with us, on the obvious path.

“Let’s check the map guys.”

It was all I could say to hold the group without losing Janet, or starting a walking debate. Donald pulls out a compass and a map.

“What direction are we headed Donald?”

I stall in making the group call. In my mind, I believe my action is preserving the group’s psychic integrity,

We need to come to realization as a group, that the right way to go is actually across the creek. I refuse to argue with Janet.

This is where I started to sink. Somewhere, I believed that we would come to the right consensus as a group without having to be an authority. The right consensus was across the creek, I knew it.

Why couldn’t I say it?

I didn’t want to have to be the one to say it.

What if I am wrong, what if I get these people to follow me and we are lead into deep water, and there is nothing there,”

Self-doubt. I slip, I feel it. I am falling asleep.

The group makes a choice that the obvious path was pointed in the right direction. Donald and Janet pick up the pace, and the group follows.

“We are headed south, we are good.”

I watch his professional pack with tin cup attached jump ahead, partnered by Janet, who only now I remember has been an outdoor guide for many years. I’ve been hijacked. I start to see them differently,

Look at those adults, so right, and I’m so wrong. They are idiots.

I follow them, thinking this. Huffing and glaring in silence…and now I am in my child self.

Where did my adult go?

I notice what I do instead of standing up and saying what I know. What I do instead of saying,

“Stop you are all wrong we need to go across the creek.”

Instead, I go into my child self… I become entrenched in self doubt. I ignore the moment, and there goes the group. In this case there goes the group, and there goes my power. How have I come so far, for so long as a leader to resign personal power at the moment a potential disagreement.

Please don’t see me as an enemy.

This again….it's more than being shot, it’s about being seen as the enemy. I don’t want to be seen as the enemy. I have a belief that by not speaking, I will avoid being held responsible for conflict. Out of fear of disrupting the peace, I lose my voice.

If only I make it through this moment, I’ll reclaim dignity later. Then I’ll speak up.

I slip into being the victim of my own inability to take a stand. I am afraid of being shot down. I see how this works. I’m in the process of projecting the enemy it onto the people that are now leading. I’ve given up my personal power.

You are the enemy... you have lead me astray, me and everyone else. We’ve all been persecuted.

This thought material is loud. It sounds like blame, and expletives…. It feels like being robbed and wronged and it is really enticing to hold onto. I see why its’ operation is so apparent in me, and in our society.

Please don’t see me as an enemy…so I can you as the enemy, and I will be safe from being seen as a persecutor.

And deeper, the belief skeleton,

It is not safe to take a stand….I don’t believe (have faith in) in myself.

I don’t want the responsibility of being seen as a persecutor, so I slip into victim mode, and seek salvation in a rescuer. I’ve become entranced in the most stable object in the universe. This triangle is not functional.

On this day, how long will it take for me to recognize we are out in the woods, off trail, during hunting season? That we’ve come six miles, some of us are hungry, and tired. Not only is it not functional, it is dangerous, and I am stuck in the swamp of a triangle waiting for someone to deliver salvation.

This makes me curious about the nature of self-doubt, it's origins, and how we slip so easily into group trance. I don’t need to ask why I followed her, because at the moment it was not conscious, it was habit. It was an old situation. Even though Janet was not my take charge even if it will kill the whole clan mother archetype, and Donald was not my I'm always directionally accurate father archetype, and I was not a child. I knew it. One mile of sinking morass, slipping to sleep, I edge between following, and being taken over by the wrong direction. I’d been mothered and fathered by the situation. I struggle to move ahead, swimming through molasses.

BANG.

A stray, mid-day shot.

The trail is narrow, I jump ahead. I know a deer trail from a main one. We’re on a deer trail.


Stay on trail.

“Stop!”

Everyone pauses. Clara speaks up.

“I am so hungry, and tired.”

I look around, into what’s really going on. Between vines and thistles we were at the end of the deer trail.

“Thanks for saying this Clara, let’s stop on that log over there to eat, and decide what to do.”

I knew we were going to turn back, the offshoot was over. The whole group moves, except Janet.

“Janet.”

“I’m not hungry... I’m going on ahead to scout.”

BANG.

I watch her head off into the vines riding her will, and I think, good riddens. And then I think,

She may actually get killed,

And then I feel scared and guilty. Under the anger I feel myself slip into the victim again…

If she wouldn’t have gone off, if she would listen, if she…. etc.”

I turn back and sit on the log to think. We are five hikers on a log. I look into everyone. These people have been waiting for me to gain my voice for half a mile. I open my peanut butter sandwich and come back to the land of the living.

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