Teachings from the Natural World: A Pathway Home

What allows a doe to know her way through the woods to rest her head and huddle her young come evening? Something in her just knows the right way. Her alert ears take pause to notice when danger accompanies her course. Might it be that she recognizes a familiar bird call that tells her she’s headed to her home in the woods. She feels the air crisp cooler on her nose as she nears the creek to quench her thirst. She takes stock of the downed trees as landmarks on her path so she can return.

What I invite you to notice in this teaching form the natural world is how a doe is silently engaging with nature to configure where she wants to go. Her message for what to do pivots on what I recognize to be her logic of survival, her values of life and family. I wish we could ask her to be sure. It seems she takes in information; she looks at it beside her needs, and ultimately something within her is aware and chooses. This is something we all might name differently. You may know this as Self, soul, God, or intuition.

Life is constantly presenting us with adversity, crossroads, and change. And just like the doe, there isn’t someone to tell us which pathways to take. She is able to find her way through an internal experience. As humans, we may be weighing more information which influences and challenges decision making: the wants of others, social acceptance, money, fear, etc. We may be caught up in these factors that it clouds our values and the voice of that something to even be able to know what home looks like, let alone to get there. There it is. The pathway. Home is a reflection of that something inside, the knowingness of yourself, your values, your needs. With that, we might conclude that the doe is truly always at home within herself and that’s why she can navigate to places that feel like home. There is nothing to determine her peace in a place other than her.

So let’s retrace her steps:

1.       Silence

2.      Attention: listening, observing

3.       Survival & values inventory

4.      Connecting to that something within her experiencing this process, which is home.

5.       Alignment with and choice that something, directing her toward the places that, too, feel like home.

Might what we witness of this animal suggest an approach to find our unique, individual pathways home? Look—she and her guidance could be right there in your West Virginia backyard.

Take what you find helpful here, or leave it all behind. Thank you for spending time with me and the doe today.