Is life really just a walk in the park? When such a metaphor is chosen, whether consciously or unconsciously, to describe one’s life, it can wield amazing power over how that life evolves and whether or not our dreams are fulfilled. Mental health professionals frequently counsel clients to become aware of the unconscious metaphors guiding their lives; for example, “My life’s a three-ring circus,” “My life is one battle after another,” or “My life’s a roller coaster” are just a few examples of how people tend to think of their lives.

When they adopt this rigid metaphor, they act as if this one specific formula must be played out over and over, without experimentation or variation. Parents and friends often unintentionally suggest metaphors that, for better or worse, stick, and without willing it so, we tend to adopt them and act out our lives as if those metaphors were accurate and/or exclusive. Today, in the spirit of Henry David Thoreau, I’m granting myself permission to examine the metaphor(s) that guide my life, beginning with, “Life is just a walk in the park.” Care to join me?

If I set out on a walk in the park … will my soul seek in my journey what I most desire?

If I set out on a walk in the park, will my legs grant me strength enough to conquer the steepest path, will my courage sustain me through dark, lonely thickets, will my heart insist on blazing a new trail, and will my soul seek in my journey what I most desire? Some innate raw screeching, like the summons of an aboriginal crow, beckons me to the quest. I step into strange, unfamiliar woodlands, not knowing what lies ahead.

This afternoon in the crisp fall air, as my feet meet the trailhead, the park feels virginal, its verdant depths unconquered. Yet thousands of years ago Coastal Salish tribes hunted and fished in this thickly forested woodland that spans hundreds of acres. It’s so anomalous to their urban surroundings; the trailhead is directly across the street from a slipshod shopping mall. At the information kiosk a sign advises me the park’s precipitous trail approximately borders Piper’s Creek through a forested canyon dipping steeply down to the shores of Puget Sound on the rim of the Salish Sea, and that Piper’s Creek salmon runs have recently been restored.

I can opt to step off the main trail onto any number of smaller paths, each suggesting mysteries of its own.

Alternatively, the kiosk’s sign informs me that I can opt to step off the main trail onto any number of smaller paths, each suggesting mysteries of its own. I grab a brochure from the kiosk and set out, hiking downhill on a spiraling, hairpin, sodden footpath that leads into the woods. Below the tree canopy, daylight fades to dark, and I am utterly alone on the path.

Descending Into the Void

Forming the upper tree canopy, ancient red bark cedars tower overhead, the same trees once stripped of seasonal bark by the Salish who fashioned everything from canoes to clothing, shoes, baskets, cradles, utensils and huts from the bark of these spiritually revered cedars they never chopped down. The silence is palpable as I round a bend and, in the deepening shadows, cross a decrepit wood bridge. I slow down, move cautiously. A snake of foreboding shivers along my spine, a sense that something grotesque looms around the next bend. I push on, defying Nature’s taunting, too proud to turn back.

Suddenly, the tree canopy breaks apart, revealing a sapphire blue sky whose billowing, luminous white clouds form poodles, fat bunnies, and old men with hooked noses that float across the heavens. In bright daylight, I am standing on the edge of an ancient orchard, its time-gnarled fruit trees clawing out like contorted monsters casting long shadows in my path. I gasp at the surprise of light, at the old fruit trees themselves, and without willing it so, stumble into their time-warped world.

It’s harvest time; the gnarled boughs laden with apples, pears and chestnuts. Park caretakers have hung signs on each tree identifying the species and date of origin. I’m alone here except for a couple of gray squirrels that observe me from underbrush at the orchard’s edge. I move from tree to tree, reading their labels, inspecting their fruit.

The newest fruit species is the Hawkeye apple from Iowa circa 1880. There’s the Twenty Ounce (Alexander), New York, 1840; the Red Astrachan, originating in Russia circa 1835; the Duchess of Oldenburg, 1835, Russia. Other apples include the Dutch Mignone, introduced from Holland to America circa 1800; the Northern Spy dessert apple, New York, 1800; a 1790 European Gravenstein; and the Rhode Island Greening apple, circa 1650. I locate two pears, an 1807 Bosc from Belgium, and a Tyson pear, 1794, Pennsylvania. As near as I can tell, the oldest species in the orchard is the Roxbury Russet apple from Massachusetts, created in 1649, the oldest apple species known to have originated in America. I wonder if Johnny Appleseed carried any of these specimens in his seed bag.

“Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts flow.” — Henry David Thoreau

From the brochure I learn that Minna Piper, who with her husband owned a candy manufacturing plant that burnt in the Great Seattle Fire, created this old orchard around 1899. The Piper family migrated north of the devastated downtown, settling in this wilderness, and here, Minna Piper made her orchard. From her orchard came the fruits and nuts used in the family’s new pastry business. For more than 100 years, although the pastry business closed long ago, Minna’s orchard has faithfully produced bounty.

I straddle a broad outcropping bough on the 1649 Roxbury Russet, and as the afternoon sun ripens, I munch on a few specimens, the fruit tinier than today’s hybrids, and more delicious. As overhead the billowing old men, bunnies and poodles — my only company — soar across their electric blue canvas, I ponder Minna Piper’s lifestyle.

A Metaphor of Growth

By what aphorism or metaphor did Minna Piper live her life? Was hers an arduous journey toward inevitable doom, her life’s burdens unrelenting and without reward? I doubt it, because a pessimist could never have collected and planted the tiny seeds that produced  this noble orchard, especially not after the family’s business was burned down and destroyed. What metaphor might Minna Piper have called upon when she hitched up her skirts, bent over, and set those seeds into the boggy soil? Certainly she wasn’t living a doomsayer’s existence; optimists plant seeds.

I scan the old orchard from my natural wood hobbyhorse. My only earthbound companions, squirrels industriously popping the spiky shells of chestnuts, seem to have warmed to my presence. Later, ambling through the orchard, I discover many fine tree hollows, and inside, homes where squirrels are storing up tidy larders of choice apples and nuts, preparing for winter’s onset. I wonder: If squirrels lived by a metaphor, what would it be? Certainly, like Mrs. Piper, one of optimism in the face of the unknown, and a determination to survive.

I observe the gurgling, streaming waters of Piper’s Creek rushing over stones toward the Sound.

From the orchard I re-enter the dark trail leading downward toward the sea. Crossing several more old bridges, I observe the gurgling, streaming waters of Piper’s Creek rushing over stones toward the Sound. I am reminded of the comment made by the late Irish writer Josephine Hart, Lady Saatchi (1942–2011), who wrote, “There is geography of the soul. Those of us who are lucky enough to find it ease like water over stone and are home.” The freshwater of Piper’s Creek rushes in its quest to comingle with the saltwater sea.

The Journey Continues

The cobbled beach is stark and deserted, and to reach it I have to cross railroad tracks that wind sharply around blind curves. I cross on the overhead iron bridge high above the tracks. From the near distance the rumbling of a train grows louder as it winds around the graceful shoreline’s curves. The iron overpass shudders as the train approaches. I hurry across and down to the beach where no one is waiting, not even a harbor seal. The train blasts its horn as it passes, and I wave at the engineer, or computer, driving it.

Car after car after car of containers thunder past and disappear around a bend. Once again, silence prevails but for the gentle lapping of a soothing incoming tide. Being more at ease in water than on ground, I wade into the frigid saltwater shallows and find peace in my soul. In the distance, over snowcapped mountains, a long black cloud drops a sheet of rain. Moments later, the sky between the mountains and the beach is spanned by an arcing rainbow. Riding its brilliant colors, a second rainbow emerges from the sun-filled mist.

I wade into the frigid saltwater shallows and find peace in my soul.

On the steep hike back up to the trailhead, I pass the orchard, knowing I’ll straddle that old Roxbury Russet again someday. Tracing burbling Piper’s Creek, hypnotized by its relentless music, its endless journey to the sea, I’m startled by a sound so alien to an urbanite’s ears that I flinch. Alien, yet instinctively recognizable: Plop. Splash. Plop.

It’s a salmon journeying against all odds upstream from the great Pacific Ocean, through the Salish Sea, up into Piper’s Creek, and upward further scenting out the precise spot where it was spawned and hatched, somewhere upstream near the trailhead, across the street from a shopping mall where Starbucks hosts throngs of a different species. If a salmon lives by a metaphor, I wonder, what would it be?

Not one, but two salmon are now struggling against the water’s flow toward their shared birthplace. The female is bright red and fat with eggs; her challenge to leap over obstacles and continue homeward made the more difficult by her bulging sides. Yet, because of her burden she must absolutely complete her journey, for the sake of her species, and give her life in the process. Behind her in the icy creek, a male salmon treads water and waits his turn at scaling the rocks and ridges standing between him and his home. His journey is as crucial as the female’s, and while they separately struggle to overcome obstacles, they journey together, the male by patience demonstrating his devotion to the female’s cause; she, likewise, by her flashing red color signals recognition of his presence. She knows he’s got her back.

Like a walk through a park, living a successful life must engage all the senses.

At the trailhead, I realize gratitude to the native tribes who did not chop down the red bark cedars, only stripped them of their seasonal bark, and to the late Minna Piper for seeding the orchard with yet-bountiful trees, and to the beach where the ocean tides rule my soul and nourish those salmon who miraculously navigate its primordial depths and flawlessly find their birthplace and never abandon the struggle to complete their destiny. Walking home from the park, navigating rush-hour traffic, I catch another rainbow arcing over the congested street, dividing the shopping mall from the primitive Eden.

The thing is — every park is different, possessing its own scenic vistas, unique paths, its treacheries and pleasantries, its histories, treasures and pratfalls. Like a walk through a park, living a successful life must engage all the senses, and a willingness to fully participate in the adventure, remembering to never trip over a metaphor, for if my life’s metaphor doesn’t click with my dreams, I grant myself permission to change paths — even change parks — while holding fast to my dreams.

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on Earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” — Louise Erdrich (The Painted Drum LP)