The world never ends where you think it does

Recently, my sister lived a few months in an adorable cabin on a beautiful mountain village street in southern California. While she was there, she never ventured further up her street, beyond her cabin and away from the main road. She would later tell me she simply assumed the street ended just beyond the bend a few hundred feet from her cabin.

In February, I rented that same Idyllwild cabin for 30 days. On my second day I walked up that street, rounded the bend, and kept walking. I found not just more cute mountain village homes enshrouded in beautiful woods and friendly neighborhood dogs who licked my face clean (or dirty), I also found an actual national park campground, endless mountain forest to hike and explore, magnificent pine-tree spires stretching up tall towards the heavens, and a giant rock-outcropping not even half a mile from the cabin that gave me quiet, delicious views of the exploding sunset sky over the valley.

She came to visit me and I took her on a little walk, past that short bend that had previously been an impenetrable barrier in her imagination, and literally deeper into a mountainous land of breathtaking beauty and wonder and mystery and new possibility. I delighted in her fascination at the discovery that had been available to her for months, just beyond that ignored and unexplored bend at the “end” of her street.

I’m not suggesting we should go off exploring in every direction. I do think it useful to remember that the world never ends where we think it does.

MY INSPIRED QUOTE
“There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction.”
–Franz Kafka