A Renewal of Perspective

A Story by Mackenzie

Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the mind. -- Alice Meynell

I hate running. My knees ache from it, my throat gets scratchy, and I generally feel like a scuzzball after I’m done. Yet, on an especially muggy day toward the beginning of this summer, I found myself chugging along in 85-degree weather, topped off with the beating, oppressive sun and 70-percent humidity. I was digging my feet into the gravel and sand beneath me, pushing over those hills and trying to control myself on the way down them. This wasn’t running; this was self-inflicted torture. I was sweaty, gross, and questioning my sanity when I finally reached the halfway point at the end of Sunny Ridge Road. I asked myself, “What the hell am I doing?”

Instantaneously, while trying to catch my breath, I answered my own question. I was out here in the stark, crushing heat because I needed solace. Ever since the start of summer, my state of mind had taken a nosedive. I made a mental list of all the things that sucked about life at that moment in time:

-My writing was terrible; it was boring, forced, and the chaos of the past semester had kept me away from it for too long.

-I would start my summer job later than I thought, which meant a dent in my finances for the upcoming year.

- I had recently gotten an email telling me that I, in fact, was not going to be hired for a job I had set my heart on and for which I was perfectly qualified. (Also a dent in the finances.)

- I had left my favorite place in the world"and some of my favorite people"to come back to boring ol’ Pellston.

- My family was gone all day at work and school, and my friends from home weren’t back from college, either. This meant being lonely all day and talking to my dog, which is interesting for only so long.

I find consolation in three things: writing, music, and physical activity. When the first two aren’t good enough, I turn to the third: exercise. If I can push myself to run faster, jump higher, throw farther than I ever have before, I can probably force myself to get over whatever is bothering me. So this run was my attempt to lighten my mood and relax a little. But with the sweat and exhaustion, it clearly wasn’t working. I just wanted to go home, take a shower, and go to sleep for a few months. Maybe when I woke up, I would be an author making tons of money, living anywhere but Pellston, surrounded by the people I loved.

Yeah, okay.

I took a swig of water and chuckled scornfully at my own silly wishes. Placing my hands on my sweaty, nasty knees to catch my breath, I envisioned myself in a desert with two drops of water left, collapsing on a sand dune in my running shorts. But my negative train of thought came to a screeching halt when I stood up, wiped my mouth, and gazed over what used to be a forest.

About five years ago someone, probably a state department, came to the end of Sunny Ridge Road and clear-cut a large chunk of land, about thirty acres. I don’t know much of anything about forestry or land management, but I do know enough to tell that at that moment, everything there had been eradicated. There was nothing left; the land and any habitats that existed there were completely changed for a long time, if not forever.

I looked around me and took in how the land had started to regenerate. The sky was still vast there"no trees were around to block it out"and the clouds formed turrets of swoopy, hazy cotton. The treeline beneath was a distant wall of green and black shadows, sloping down and back up again. To the far north side of the cutting, a track from a truck stretched back and disappeared into the overgrowth. Bluejays called out, intermixed with the mechanical cawing of crows; insects buzzed behind it all, a countermelody of hums. Finches and monarchs flitted around, landing on a nearby stalk of goldenrod, spotted knapweed, or Queen Anne’s lace. These scratchy summertime weeds covered up the old, gray leftover stumps. Sandy soil and a layer of weeds, insects, and aspen saplings"which grew in sparse clumps, like a bad haircut"encased the only standing trees in the field, a grove of half a dozen young maples in the center.

My breath was steady now and I wiped the humidity from my forehead as I imagined what this must have looked like before they cut it down. The other forests in the area, further up the road, were extremely dense; even in the winter when there were no leaves on the trees, it was hard to see a hundred feet into them. If I were to step in, past that threshold of light and dark, grass and wood, I would discover a whole different side of the landscape. There were so many shadows in those forests, and there might be a dozen different bird calls at any moment. The forests on Sunny Ridge Road are a secretive, solitary place; an ideal option for someone seeking some peace of mind. But now this chunk was missing. Birds had been evicted from their homes, deer were without shade, wood mice were without protection from predators. It was a gaping hole in something that once was beautiful. Now all that was left were some dying logs, a few patches of wildflowers, raspberry bushes, and hundreds of these scraggly little saplings. It made me sad to think of the destruction that had changed that forest forever. Everything was stark. Stagnant. Hot.

I stood for the longest time and looked at that post-forest. Whether I really wanted to take it in, or I just didn’t feel like running again for a while, I don’t know. But the longer I examined it, the happier I became. Not at the thought of destruction, of course, but at the saplings. As I stood there, I listened. And I heard nothing from the land. No cries. No complaints, whines, or “if-onlys.” As silly as it sounds, I rather admired those saplings. Here I was, pissing and moaning about my legs hurting. Yet in the midst of its own losses, the land remained silent. The hunk of ecosystem that had lost everything said nothing.

As I sat down next to a patch of goldenrod in the gravelly sand, I sympathized with the land. I, too, had faced a boatload of sudden, overwhelming changes at a point in my life. Just as this forest had lost everything familiar to it when it had been clear-cut, life as I knew it had been flipped upside down when I went off to college at Northern Michigan University. I was in a strange city, I didn’t know my way around, and I was miles away from my usual sources of comfort. Though Marquette is a beautiful place, I admit I was scared at first to be there. What if something happened and I got lost? Was I going to get mugged if I walked alone at night? I didn’t even know how to get to Wal-Mart if I needed something. It was twice as big as any city I was used to living in. I also was deprived of my emotional support from the second my family walked tearfully out of my dorm room. I remember pulling back the blinds and watching them walk back to the van without me, knowing that I wouldn’t see them for at least another six weeks. I was completely on my own, from then on, without my family or my friends from home. I knew no one in my hall, and the prospect of new faces isn’t an exciting thought for me; it’s rather terrifying. My dorm was nothing like my familiar home; it was loud, the food was different than what I was used to, and I had to share a tiny space with another person.

In addition to all of these sudden changes, I was nervous about college. What should I expect? Would my classes be hard? What if I got so busy I failed everything and had to drop out? Of course, I know now that none of that is remotely the case, but I was terrified this time last year. My parents and I were paying a lot of money for me to be there; I couldn’t let them down. Socially, I was afraid too. I didn’t know if I’d make any friends or find anyone like me at Northern. I’m not exactly an outgoing person, so this was a large concern of mine.

And then, about a month into the start of college, as if all of this stress wasn’t enough, I ended a relationship of two years with a guy named James. I got to NMU and discovered that I really didn’t have that much in common with him, and I was letting a relationship that spanned 500 miles and nine hours inhibit me from going out and making the most of my freshman year. Most of all, in the midst of being distracted with everything else that was swirling around me, I found I no longer invested my emotions in my relationship. I was there merely by the title of “girlfriend;” there was no substance behind those ten letters. So I did what any person would do and ended it. But many people, including James and his family, don’t understand that doing the dumping stings just as badly as being dumped. He didn’t take it well, and neither did his family; soon they got involved, making threats and preaching Bible verses at me day after day, telling me I was a heathen and on the path to Hell.

Doesn’t exactly make a person feel good.

So amidst all of this new-life stress, I was being cut down by people who didn’t have any right to do so. I was depressed, angry, and lethargic. I would get four to five hours of sleep a night, cried at the drop of a hat, and had the temper of a rabid dog. In general, life was getting me down.

But eventually, I decided I couldn’t take it any longer. Something had to change. So I waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing happened, until one morning I got a text at 5:00 from my dad. Initially, I was irritated that he woke me up so early"I didn’t have class till nine"but when I read it, I was dumbstruck. My father is a “quotes person,” he loves little quips about life and hard work and being confident. Sometimes, he’ll make up his own quotes. My dad also has an uncanny ability to know exactly what to say in a given situation. This text message said simply, “You can’t perform in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself. Have a great day, sweetie. Love, Dad.” I read it over and over again, absorbing his words. I teared up a bit, partly because I missed my dad a lot, but mostly because I knew he was exactly right. My life and experiences were in my hands, no one else’s. If I wanted to ace my classes, make friends, and have a great first year of college, I had to take the wheel. I had to envision myself doing well and having fun. There was no way these things could happen with the way I was living my life then, in misery and pessimism.

I decided it was time for a new start, a new outlook. Dad was right. I threw on my clothes, made a cup of tea, and biked out to Presque Isle just in time to catch the sunrise over Lake Superior. The sun had a fresh start today, so why couldn’t I? And that hour of watching the sun come up before class made all the difference. From that point on in my year, I didn’t let much of anything get me down. I found that I was more outgoing and confident in myself, and ended up meeting some of the coolest people I’ve ever known. I worked diligently in my classes, stayed on top of my homework and finished freshman year with a 3.98 GPA. I had adventures exploring Marquette"climbing mountains, cliff jumping into Superior, snowboarding on campus at 3 a.m."and I didn’t let the awful things James’s family were saying about me get in my way. I was determined to see the positive side in everything; occasionally, I’d have a bad day like we all do, but I picked up the pieces the next morning and kept cruising. I have my dad’s quote taped to my laptop, and I can’t wait to get back to Northern this fall. I have even higher hopes for this year, because I now know the key to happiness; it’s not about what happens to you, but about how you react what happens to you. It lies in attitude and perspective.

A deerfly landed on my arm and I snapped out of my reverie, shooing it away. I found myself staring at an old gray stump and the tiny green tree that was flourishing next to it. The longer I sat in that goldenrod patch and looked at the sapling, the more it reminded me of what I’d learned at the beginning of that first semester. This post-forest just reaffirmed that lesson.

I believe that everything in nature is beautiful. Its colors astound me: the lime green of the new spring leaves, finally out after enduring a long, hard winter; the vibrant reds of the sunset. The way it so innocently stuns the human viewer amazes me. It is completely unaware of what it’s doing, yet it is perfect. I also believe in optimism and looking beyond the present situation, no matter how ugly it may be, to what lies beneath it. There is always something good in every little thing. Even though the aspens that were coming up in the clearing would probably not be good lumber or even useful for the animals, they made a lovely sound in the slight breeze that was blowing. It was like a bubbling, merry chatter; almost as if the trees were having a friendly conversation with one another, getting along. The spotted knapweed"a ghastly-green, scratchy, and terribly invasive plant with a flower that reminds me of a character from The Muppets"is generally seen as ugly by itself. But get a whole field of this plant together, and it’s as if the hills are covered with a heavenly purple blanket. It’s a delicate color and it’s fleeting, only around for a few weeks. The old, decaying logs that were lying around may not have been charming or even remotely pretty, but they did provide homes for all sorts of insects and little rodents. And the goldenrod, often blamed for allergies and hated because of it, can thrive anywhere. It’s hardy, resilient, and usually one of the first species to regenerate in a landscape.

But in addition to all of these little blessings"the aspens, spotted knapweed, logs, and goldenrod"the thing that reminded me the most of the key to happiness was the sheer fact that this landscape had lost everything at one point. So many things had changed about it, and it probably would never be the same exact ecosystem it was before. But it was equally beautiful as its surrounding forests"just different. A whole new ecosystem existed here now, and the land simply went with the flow, the natural way of things, regeneration. New flora and fauna had been given a chance to flourish here, and it seemed perfectly happy to do so. This just showed me, and reaffirmed to me, that sometimes good things fall apart so other"sometimes better"things can fall together. When a forest is knocked out or burned down, it opens up that much more space for new things to thrive.

As I stood up and dusted my legs off, I applied this lesson to my current situation. So, I didn’t get the job I wanted for the school year, and the job I did have for the summer was put off for a few weeks. And I was stuck at home, away from my family all day. But as I put the cap on my water bottle and stretched my calves out, I realized that there was a bright side to each thing that was bringing me down. Not getting the job at the Writing Center meant I didn’t have to deal with whiny procrastinators who wanted me to magically fix their 15-page research paper at the last minute (and it landed me a job at Northern’s publishing department, which is far more applicable to my career path). Starting work late meant less money, but it also more time for me to relax and really get back into the swing of my writing. And not seeing my family or friends all day just made me value the time I did spend with them that much more.

I believe in the power of optimism and being grateful for the little things in life. The most unfortunate of all troubles is when a person lacks the ability to see the positive side of things. While I do still complain sometimes about such trivial things as being sore and sweaty and exhausted, it’s amazing what happens when I stop. When I take a breath. When I step back and look at life as a whole. There is always, always something good in any situation, even in a demolished forest, wasted job application, or dead relationship. The trick lies in being able to see the beauty in that decaying log, or that spotted knapweed. Sometimes it just takes a few modest little saplings to remind you how truly lucky you are to be alive and have the opportunities you possess.

So I took a deep breath. I wiped the sweat from my brow. I stretched my hamstrings and quads once more. And I continued on my run, determined to not let the heat and frustration get in the way of the things that were really worth noticing: the bright sides of my “misfortunes,” and the golden sunset peeking out from behind the aspens that would someday grow into another beautiful forest.