Get in Action

I spend a slightly unreasonable amount of my morning train ride looking at trees. As the woods pass the window, I find myself noticing how the branches break up the light, where the moss gathers, and the small openings between the trunks. Every so often, I lean closer to the glass and think, “That looks like a good spot.”

For chanterelles, that is. I’m not actually picking any. I’m sitting on a train, presumably on my way to something more urgent. But some part of me is still wandering through the woods with my grandfather.

I got this habit from him. Walking together, I gradually realised that we were looking at the same forest and seeing rather different things. I saw trees and the occasional promising-looking patch of yellow, usually a leaf. He noticed a sheltered hollow, a narrow tractor track, a change in the ground. There were possibilities in places I had barely registered.

Over time, I began to notice them too. The forest acquired texture. What had once been a fairly continuous arrangement of trees became a collection of small differences, each worth paying attention to. We had something to look for, and somehow that made everything else more visible as well. The nature starts to talk and leaves breadcrums of patterns if you know what to look for.

I’ve started thinking of this as “action-mode”. The name makes it sound like something that requires special clothing and an ambitious morning routine. What I mean is considerably less demanding: being open to what your surroundings might offer, because you can imagine yourself taking part in them.

The surfer sees more than a stretch of sea. There are waves to read, changes in the weather, possibilities taking shape. The skateboarder notices a ledge or a patch of smooth pavement where I might see an entirely unremarkable square. The forager looks into the woods and sees places worth exploring. Their interests give the world another dimension. Somewhere they could otherwise pass through becomes somewhere they might engage.

What appeals to me is that this attention need not disappear when the activity stops. I don’t have to be carrying a basket to notice the forest. Even through a train window, the possibility of being there changes how I look at it.

Perhaps this is what I find missing in consumption-mode. The world becomes something delivered rather than something encountered.

My current view is that a richer life has something to do with keeping that room open. Letting a detail catch your attention. Following a thought a little further. Looking at an ordinary place and wondering what you might find there, or what you might do with it.

Action-mode is not necessarily about being busy. It is about being available: to your surroundings, to your own curiosity, to the possibility that something familiar still has more to offer. Doing something can open that door, but the point is what comes through it.

I don’t have a particularly convincing method for staying this way. I still slip into the comfortable habit of letting the day happen around me. All I can do is remind myself to remain a little more open, and to follow the occasional invitation rather than immediately returning to whatever was holding my attention.

My grandfather gave me a reason to look closely at the forest. I’d like to carry more of that attention into the rest of my life.

So I’ll keep looking out of the train window. Not because I expect to find chanterelles at that speed, but because I like what happens when I’m open to finding something.

Even on the way to somewhere else.

Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.
- Theodore Roosevelt