I Found What I Was Looking For

I went back to find the Hobbit Tree. Turns out, I had already found it. Sometimes what we're searching for is right in front of us. We just don't recognize it.

Well, this is embarrassing.

I told you about going back to find my Hobbit Tree, the wonderful old tree where I'd planned to leave a little yellow kindness rock. I couldn't find it. So I found another wonderful tree, tucked the rock inside, and decided perhaps the magic wasn't where I'd left it.

There was just one problem.

It was the same tree.

I didn't recognize it.

Same trail. Same enormous old tree. Same hollow at its base. Somehow I had walked right up to exactly what I was looking for and thought I hadn't found it.

Which makes me laugh. And it also makes me wonder how often I do that.

Lately I've been walking the same trails I've walked for years, but I'm seeing them differently.

Maybe it's because I've been deliberately practicing what I call Bloomscrolling, my antidote to doomscrolling. Instead of scrolling through everything that's wrong with the world, I go outside and look for what's right with it.

Come walk with me.

There are tiny things and enormous things. Things that have just appeared and things that have probably been there for years waiting for me to notice.

Sometimes I see them.

And occasionally, they see me.

This week I looked out the great-room window where I've watched hundreds, maybe thousands, of sunrises and suddenly saw a heart in a tree.

How long has she been there?

I have absolutely no idea.

Then, out on the trail, I spotted a magnificent buck peeking over the brush.

I saw him.

And then came that wonderful moment when I realized:

Oh. You see me too.

Seeing and being seen.

Maybe that's part of what happens when we slow down and pay attention. The familiar becomes interesting again. The ordinary becomes extraordinary. The world hasn't necessarily changed.

We have.

I'm grateful for that old Hobbit Tree I couldn't recognize.

I'm grateful for the heart outside my window.

I'm grateful for Mr. Antlers watching me watch him.

And I'm grateful to live in a place where I can walk outside and be reminded, again and again:

There is so much here to see. Come walk with me.