The other day I found myself up in Big Creek State Park just north of the city of Des Moines in this little swath of the Midwest. It was a cool and crisp autumn day. The light was shifting through the half-naked tree branches and refracting off the ripples on the water’s surface almost as if it were being run through a filter on a social media app. I had brought the Squisheys along and had just snapped a photo of them contemplating life at the side of the lake while I waited for a hint from a friend in regards to a nearby cache that I could not find.
I required a little patience.
I joke often that patience isn’t my strong suit. I have always been one to rush through things. I try to be quick with everything I do, afraid to keep people waiting, to anticipate needs before others even voice them. Patience has never been something in my vocabulary, but then I’ve never been given a chance to learn it. I was that child that was told to hurry up so often that I forgot how to slow down.
But geocaching has taught me otherwise.
There’s patience with caches. Sometimes, a cache is right where I expect it, dangling from a tree branch and glistening in the sunlight or under a lamp post skirt waiting to be retrieved. Other times, however, it’s a fake rock in an entire garden of rocks or that one random stick that has the test tube that holds the log. But then there are the one that just can’t seem to be found, even though they don’t have a high difficulty or terrain. They test me and try me.
Don’t get me started on the ones that have taken several trips to and from to even find…. (Geocachers interested in such a cache that required us to learn patience, check out GC7ZN5Q)
Sometimes, the best experiences require a little patience. One must wait for the correct season, the correct group of geocachers, the correct conditions for the hike. Sometimes, the challenges one wants to complete must wait for another day or year or decade. It’s difficult when one must endure this though. We want to have the same experience as others. We want to chase those stars. We want to do it all. But time is finite and other things in life sometimes must get in the way. We have to miss out on opportunities. We have to become a bit more patient.
Often, there is adventure in the waiting.
Were it not for patience, I wouldn’t have some of the moments I have had. I wouldn’t have sat and admired the way a pond in a park looks in autumn (which is a scene in my upcoming serial novel). I wouldn’t have noticed the heron that flew across the creek. I wouldn’t have my just breathe and be videos over on Instagram. I wouldn’t have appreciated the variance in the seasons along a certain stretch of highway as I traverse up to the very state park I started this blog post with.
And that life lesson from geocaching extends over into my life now. I am learning to become more patient with myself, healing that inner child that was told one too many times she’s had her head in the clouds and needed to hurry up. I’ve learned to be patient with my writing. It’s always been a work in progress and always will be, no matter how many novels and novellas I have to my name. But I am learning to trust the creative process within me. I am learning to take my time and take a breath and let my body rest. I don’t have to do everything for everyone. I can learn to drop things that don’t matter to me even if they matter to others.
Back to that little cache too. It turns out, I had overlooked the container, camouflaged so well with nature. I was eventually given a hint and found it. The friend sent back a laughing emoji to my text in admiration. I pulled the log out, signed it and returned it to the exact position I had found it, perhaps hiding it a bit better with detritus from the trees.
I could have given up entirely. I could have backed down…. but had I, I wouldn’t have had a story that is now fun to tell. I wouldn’t have a moment that reminded me to look down as well as up when searching. I wouldn’t have had the photo opportunity or that brief pause of calm by the water’s edge. I wouldn’t have this blog post either.
Patience is still a word I am learning to put into my vocabulary. But it’s slowly becoming one in my story.
Stay magical, friends.
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