Lessons from fish
The creek as a classroom
I recently spent money to go forest bathing which involves 100% more clothing than the name implies. Forest bathing is the kind of weekend activity that makes people’s brows furrow in confusion when you talk about it but it’s what I needed. You don’t have to spend money to go forest bathing, it’s an innately free thing to do, but sometimes you do need to spend money for someone else to remind you to do things like sit outside and write.
It wasn’t so much the forest bathing that drew me in but it was the promise of writing in a community of writers that felt like an exhale to me. I like being around people who want to talk about how words and cadence and pacing and prose made them feel. I like being around people who nod knowingly when others share their insecurities about the craft and writers block. I like remembering that half of being a writer is just calling yourself one and doing it.
Forest bathing was secondary for me but I was prepared for whatever the workshop asked of me. To kick off the exercise, the boundaries of the property were outlined to us from the perch of the writer’s room. From the treeline to the rope fence by the horse field. From the creek to the guest house. The premise of forest bathing is simple: for ten minutes walk around and look for movement. Then for ten minutes sit and look for movement.
This was the only point that I felt nervous about this whole forest bathing business and thought through if I could nonchalantly get in my car and fly down the dirt road. It sounds lovely in principle but in practice I was worried that I had been assigned twenty minutes to overthink in nature. The stillness felt like a potential petri dish for thoughts like, “did I remember to turn off the oven when I left?" and “does everyone maybe secretly hate me and are they right?” and “would I know if I have a brain eating amoeba from the lake yesterday?”
But forest bathing does not lead to spirals like that, not when you’re looking for something. And my homework was clear: look for movement and movement is everywhere when you’re looking for it. The pebbles crunching under my feet. The ripples of the water as the property’s dog clamored after the fish. The shadows of fish moving as one group. The wind through the leaves. The birds in the trees.
Time was also in motion and I found myself situated for the second part of the assignment sitting perched on the creek’s edge with my feet in the water. This decision almost landed me fully in the creek as rocks moved unevenly and fish panicked at my interruption as I took my seat and only briefly slipped into the flurry of thoughts that were not the forest bathing prompt before recentering.
But then, stillness. As I finally stood still, movement returned around me. A water bug gliding at the water’s surface. A leaf passing by. The algae my feet stirred up settling on top of my toes.
And then, it happened.
The fish came back. In my stillness I have become another resident of the creek and the fish swim around me. Minnows bump into my ankles, surprised but undisturbed. Young trout swim over and around me.
This is not my first time being a student to fish. Fish have been an unlikely mentor in my life, season after season. But the fish around me at this moment are teaching me something that I have been in an ongoing lesson about. And maybe some lessons are louder because you’ve slowly been softening to hear it and when it finally sinks in, it roars.
In not being a part of all the movement around me I exhale a breath I didn’t realize I have been holding. I breathe in greedily because I now have new data for a concept I have been trying to get my brain to see: you can slow down. You can stop. Life will not stop moving if you do these things. In fact, it’s essential that you do these things. Take a seat, just be.
The metaphor is the loudest thing in the quiet creek around me.
