Off the path

Road to Lough Dan, Wicklow Mountains, Ireland.

Why such a trip to the east? I guess for a while now I've felt off my path, disoriented, lost. My path used to look so clear, so well defined, like the black path in the infrared photo I took earlier this year which was the path that leads to Lough Dan in the Wicklow mountains. I guess I'm looking to re 'orient' myself, literally, heading for the Orient, where I have never been before, where all the philosophies that have ever made any sense to me originate from, where I can hopefully get back on my path. In the book I'm reading by Jay Griffiths called 'Wild - an elemental journey' she talks about paths through the amazon jungle, and how getting off the path can be literally life threatening. As I read it I took it immediately as a metaphor for my lost orient:

'A path in the forest can seem so visible, so inevitable when you're walking along it, but once you've stepped off it, you know it for what it is: a fragile skein too thin to see unless you're looking right down on it. Once you are off the path, it does not seem inevitable. Rather it seems extraordinarily lucky and briefly precious. On the instant of stepping off the path a curtain of green confusion falls. A bare little patch of earth catches your sight. Is that the path? It goes nowhere. The path may be three feed away but be as invisible as if it were three miles away. What is completely revealed and what is completely hidden are so close, depending on the angles of sight just a few degrees different. (If you do get lost, stop. Mark your position, light a fire if you can. Move in circles around it, trying to find the path).'

I guess that's what this journey will be, moving in circles ever widening trying to find the path...