I had a moment in nature this morning where I saw a pattern.
I woke to clear skies and a very orange glow washing over me as the sun rose and shone into my van. I picked up where I left off in the weather book I’m currently reading and read about the gaps in between a warm and cold front – what lies between them and how to read/ predict what is to come.
Wanting to let that sink in for a bit I paused, got a campfire going outside, and decided to sit by the fire with another book I’ve been reading, Sand Talk.
Opening at the bookmark, I couldn’t quite pick it up as it was part way through a concept, so I turned back two pages to the image of three zigzagging lines parallel to each other. At the beginning of the chapter Tyson explains their original meaning, but here he goes deeper. He talks about what’s between the lines, in the gaps, and about predicting what’s to come. He then goes on to add the “strange attractor” of the chaos theory. I had to step aside from the book to look up chaos theory because I’m not really well knowledged in things like that. I only know how the term is used in conversations every now and again, not in an intellectual way. Internet is poor where I’m called so it took a while but I got the basic gist of it. I’ll look into it more later with better internet because I want to fully understand the concept and all its parts and players, like the strange attractor.
I looked around me, noticing things that have had strange attractors change their course.
A tree starts out with the knowledge of growing up to the sunlight and reaching out to get a much of it as it can. Shade from one side causes it to reach sideways. Strong winds often racing through cause it to lean or hug the ground a little more. A bushfire takes out a large tree sharing the area and lots of small ones seize the opportunity to shoot up around it.
The smoke from my fire very slightly drifts in one direction with the slightest breeze. I move my chair from one side to another as the sun starts to warm my front too much. The sun has moved me. I then cause the smoke to change direction slightly as I’m boxing the breeze. My fire creates a heat that affects the air current. I watch as a crow tries to light on a thin dead branch above, breaking the branch off. It drops some tiny bits of bark and bugs or whatever which fall toward my fire in the almost still air but as they get closer the heat of the fire slows them down and pushes them away.
Its not chaos or anarchy in the negative sense. It’s a beautifully forming day.
Then a rust orange and burnt wood brown butterfly flutters into my camp area landing only a few metres from me leaving its wings open to the sun light like solar panels. The pattern on its back has those same zigzagging lines.
I realise that I’m actually sitting in a gap right now. I have no immediate plan. Not today, not this week, not the next month or year. I’m just drifting and allowing things to play out around me. I also realise how I see ‘strange attractors’ as adventure instigators. I live with the unspoken knowledge that chaos creates moments of freedom from the mundane. They can be hard, but problem solving them or just surviving them, has created a new interesting chapter in your story. Little treasures can be found in the chaos. And I love discovering little treasures. I look forward to finding them. When my mind is in knots I see nothing. When I let go of fear constraints or decide to try something out if the ordinary, I find treasures. If I hadn’t stepped out of my comfort zone the other day whilst on a walk to a historic butchers farm at Yarrangobilly Caves, slipping my shoes and socks off and trying to walk in a freezing cold creek to see if a rock sticking out of the embankment was really a bottle instead of just a rock, I wouldn’t have found a rock in the creek that looked like a steak, meters below where the butchers house once stood. Now that’s a random treasure and I could have missed it.
If I was living the fourty hour work week saving money for retirement like 99% of the adult population, I wouldn’t be here at all. The only treasure I’d be finding is money stored in a bank account that I only see digitally in an electronic payslip or an eftpos terminal screen or as a balance on my bank app.
I’m thankful for the above treasures found in the space between the lines this morning. Including the branch the crow caused to fall. I’ll be using that to help start the fire again tomorrow morning.
Those three zigzagging lines drawn in the sand by Tyson were of three features in the landscape where he sat, each built at different times. The river, a road, and a train track. One affects the direction of the other. Need for water, need for moving from here to there, need for transporting goods have all formed the lines. Will there be a fourth line? Maybe a rail trail people will need to use to keep fit before or after their 9 to 5?
What are my lines so far? What’s my next line? What will be the ‘because’ of that line? Will a strange attractor come along and nudge me in another direction? Please let me find a Mr strange attractor. Hahaha.
And so the adventure continues.
Oh, and hey… After writing this I watched a youtube video of a mates with the weather pattern presenting exactly what I had been reading about what to find in the gaps. There you go.
Now To Morrow 