Bad Day

The leaves have fallen from all the trees but the oak now.  More sky, more sun, more wind, and fewer tourists parking on the road to take pictures of the horse with a blazing background of red sugar maples.I’m grateful for all the mulch, but I haven’t had time to pick it all up yet.  I made a city trip this weekend past, which was necessary and good, but provoked a minor mental collapse today.  I have endurance, and I have a healthy stress response, but my stress response has no endurance.The city for three days stretched my stress capacity to its limit, and I found myself in a terrible place of being unable to cope with, well, life in general.  I feel helpless and incapable; the panic rises in my chest and feels like a fluttering bird trapped in there, and I can’t draw a satisfying breath.  Worst of all, I feel like my antennae are numb and I lose the sense of being connected to my guidance system, so I flounder around unsure of what is the right thing to do, and that leaves me feeling quite unsafe.Bad day.I have serious compassion for people for whom this is a chronic condition.  For me, losing my connection to soul and nature and my own spirit is terrifying and temporary.  But I think some people sleepwalk half their lives without that, feeling only a suspicion that there is something they’re missing, just off to the left.I saw lots of them in the city.It’s amazing to me that the larger “we” can collectively build these sprawling, sick, unhappy, disconnected organisms (cities) that really don’t nourish most of the citizens in them, and in fact the majority of the world’s population now lives in urban settings.  Ie., disconnected from the places where the food that feeds them is grown.  This is very very sad to me.  I am again, grateful for the luxury and personal opportunity I live in and the grand abundance of space and nature that Canada holds.Canada rules.