I often find myself asking existential questions, poking around the corners of “normal” daily life and holding up a magnifying glass for closer inspection.
This hen takes the less traveled road daily. She gets those succulent worms and nutrient-rich bugs that her coopmates are missing because they don’t have the courage or ambition to lay claim.
She flies over the chicken yard fence and wanders alone in a wider field of clover, grass, nettle, and dandelion. She roams the base of blackberry bushes and along an irrigation ditch, plucking up variety. Serenity and satisfaction are her companions.
Her coopmates don’t even know she is missing. They have no desire to taste the freedom she knows. They have no knowledge of the danger she faces every time she sets out alone. She doesn’t care what they think. She doesn’t ask permission. She bravely strikes out on her own, living life on her terms and finding her joy.
I straddle the fence. I am like this hen in ways, but I am also like her coopmates. I have taken the reins of freedom and ridden far and wide, but the tether of a coop is hard to break. This hen finds her way back to the safety of her roost each night. She samples the good life by day, and she gives in to her need for community at dusk.
Freedom is not free. It comes at a price. This hen is willing to pay the price. She lives in the moment, determined to gather in the fullness of what life offers her. At any moment, a hawk could swoop down and end her striving. She doesn’t think of the hawk, or fox, or raccoon. She is driven by sweet grass and bountiful bug forage.
When we step out of “normal,” there is usually someone to try to push us back in line. There are people to say we are weird or abnormal. There are forced social contract obligations to living in human society. We are vulnerable to these nudges from others. It takes courage to step out and take that road less traveled. It takes fortitude to follow our drive and ignore naysayers.
Who is willing to be an individual and forge an unknown path?
Are we like this hen, or are we like those who are afraid to fly over the fence?
Is it okay to fly over some fences and choose not to fly over others?
Sometimes the path less traveled leads to rewards we would never have dreamed of. The tasty morsels lie in untrodden places, away from the “norm,” outside in the vast wide open along that lonely road.
My heart is out there with the brave hen.
That is beautifully put. Sometimes the tethers that keep us in the coop aren’t of our own making, but it’s hard to break free of them