When I was a young man I had a few opportunities to plough a field with my grandfather. We would turn the soil with the remnants of last year’s crop into the ground and prepare for next season’s planting. One day during our plowing we upset a large mouse nest, and about 15 mice when running out of the ground that we recently disrupted. I reflected on how this mice had no control over this circumstance. In their short span of existence, they could have had at least 12 generations of mice produced in this cozy little den. The original couple that settled and built the nest must have done so early in the planting season the previous year. Life had gone on in perfect bliss and in perfect mouse conditions for 18 months, when suddenly catastrophic destruction was brought into their lives.
Years later in a high school class, I was introduced to some poetry by Robert Burns. He was a Scottish Poet who wrote many lyrics to common songs. One of his poems, called “‘To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough,” reflects this exact experience of my youth:
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Yesterday, I completed my once a year epic journey into one of the wilderness areas of the United States. I will detail this experience in an up and coming blog, but during this hike my daughter had a similar experience. We finished a long march along a high desert plateau that left us exhausted and desperate for flat and clear ground to setup our tents. After a scan of the area and a search, we found a rudimentary camp site where someone had built a fire ring many years ago. There were a few locations under ancient looking juniper trees where we could pitch a tent. After setting all of our gear up, we decided to create a small fire to sit by as we got ready to go to sleep. After lighting the fire, my daughter noticed an ant hill that was near the edge of the fire ring.
As the fire matured, the ground became warmer and warmer. Pretty soon you could see some ants investigating to find out what the cause of the extra warmth was. After another few minutes, the ants started abandoning their home very rapidly. They were carrying larvae out, looking in desperation for an escape path. These ants did not know that they had built their home next to a fire ring. Another human had not been in this spot for probably 10 years. The queen ant setup the colony in what seemed like ideal conditions. Loose soil, protection from rocks, available food supply from nearby juniper trees. They had been surviving here for many years, until this fateful moment when all was suddenly in a life threatening turmoil.
So my daughter had the same life experience that I did, at about the same age. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you do not understand the full picture or the dynamics going on around you and your plans get dashed by events and circumstances seemingly out of your control. This was the way of our entire backpacking trip. We had tremendous plans, great ambitions to forge one river, cross the plateau and forge another. Unfortunately, the near jungle like overgrowth on the first stream, the lightning storms, the hail storms, and a spreading wild fire would thwart our ambitions and we would end up taking a different path.
Our best laid plans did not come to reality, but, we did however, forge new trails that were probably equally rewarding. This is how it is in life, whether you are an ant, field mouse or a human. Best to stop stressing about how things are not turning out the way you want, and get to the process of living.
