Lessons in stress management

It’s not even 8 a.m. and I had intended to sleep in, taking a much needed break after a very long and stressful couple of weeks. Instead I’m talking on my cell phone while logging into my computer — still in bed, at least — listening to a colleague explain the need for an urgent intervention to fix an issue on our company’s website.

Of all the days. But it’s a simple fix, and after a few minutes of work, I have the choice to go back to bed or get up and seize the day. Carpe diem, as my dad would say.

The day wins.

Why I went to the woods

Embracing the woods, Cathedral Grove, summer 2010.

“The woods” has always been a place I go to get away — somewhere to collect my thoughts, to quiet my mind, to connect with the earth and my place within the larger society of living things.

Recently, I decided to live there.

Growing up in the so-called “Ontario cottage country” north of Toronto, the woods seemed welcoming, almost friendly, and definitely calm compared to the chaos of roaring machinery and reckless ego out on the lakes. As a child, I would lay in bed and invent stories about the lives of the woodland creatures on my wallpaper, tracing the comings and goings of Mr. Badger and Ms. Mouse through their woodland neighbourhood with my finger, the wall a map. Friends and I would escape to the woods as a refuge from the “orphanage” of my home and stay there till dark, exploring the far reaches of our imaginations within the confines of the land between our lane-way and the main road.