Labyrinth

The woods are shrouded in fog this afternoon, a strong wind drizzling moisture onto my face and hair as I walk further into the park. The road is an old friend. I have walked here a hundred times, each pine-needled curve welcoming me back to the ongoing conversation between us. I love hiking here especially on foggy days like this one, when sounds are oddly muted, and the dampness releases a mix of sweet scents: eucalyptus branches, molding oak leaves and plums, wild grasses and clumps of fennel which grow abundantly next to the blackberry bushes. A moving canopy of mist transforms the park into a different, primeval world, a place of spirits and hidden aspects. The absence of daylight guides me inward; I sense the forest in ways that aren’t possible when I can see it perfectly clearly.    

In ancient times, the goddess Khaos, or Chaos, was the goddess of mist and invisible air. She was the first of the deities to emerge at the creation of the universe, according to Greek myth, and out of her came the Earth (Gaia), and Love (Eros). She was the grandmother of Night, of Light, of Darkness and of Day, as well as all the other gods and goddesses. Her name refers to the gap, the space between heaven and earth, the chasm.

I have spent much of my life struggling against chaos, viewing that chasm as uncomfortable and random, to be avoided if at all possible. I remember a time in the mid-nineties when I moved five times in five years, all the while longing for the comforts of a home where I could simply stay put for a while.  One promising rental house after another was sold out from under me at the height of the housing boom, no matter what the agreement had been when I initially moved in.  I began to loathe the sight of those cardboard boxes, and I mostly stopped unpacking them, guessing, correctly, that I’d just have to tote them off again to a different neighborhood in the not-too-distant future. I bought new dishcloths and colanders, exhausted by the thought of rummaging through the garage one more time on a treasure hunt for kitchen things—had I packed them in with the vases and candles, or was that a couple of houses ago? I no longer bothered to hang pictures on the freshly painted walls, just parked the potted roses and the patio furniture in yet another backyard which didn’t belong to me and sent off a change of address form to the DMV.  It didn’t please me that I knew the movers’ first names, that they knew every stick of my furniture.

It was difficult to believe that anything good could emerge from such
constant upheaval.  New cats or new friends found me at each address, but it seemed I could no longer find myself—all the new beginnings seemed just that; beginnings. Uprooted so regularly, I lost my bearings and my routine, along with the basket of holiday ornaments and the ice trays and the back left wheel from the TV stand.  

The park was a refuge during that time from work and house-hunting and not enough sleep. I drove back to the woods as often as I could, finding solace walking underneath the long shadows of redwoods which had stood majestically in one place for longer than my lifetime, or groves of pine trees so sturdy and
familiar they felt like relatives. When the fog rolled in, obscuring signposts in front of the hiking trails and blurring the edges of the road, I found it comforting, as if I could stop trying so hard to see where my life was heading, as well.

Today my stroll takes me past the deserted botanical garden, as the damp afternoon is swallowed into evening, and the ducks circle the silver-gray lake in the distance. A trio of deer breaks suddenly from the underbrush and just as quickly, vanishes into the mist. Chaos, the goddess of the earthbound lower air—I imagine her as the force which pulls us into our unknowing, the necessary blindness out of which our real vision emerges. Goddess of fate, who turns life upside down and then rights it again, once we let go of the old parameters.

Tonight I’ll head home, back to the small blue house I wanted so fiercely, the one I’ve now lived in for seven years. I think back to all I’ve gained, all I’ve learned on the mysterious winding path I traveled to get home, and see that it wasn’t so very far, after all, from the path I always supposed would take me there. Peering through the fog, it just didn’t look like any road I knew, a space between heaven and earth.

Stacy Appel is a writer in California whose work has been featured in The Chicago Tribune and other publications.  She has also written for National Public Radio. 

~Stacy Appel