THE GNOME PROJECT

Zephyr stepped off his front stoop with a bounce in his step and no particular errand in mind — just getting out and going where his legs would take him.

The quiet of a clear morning after a blustery night, that half day between weather systems, always felt somewhat relaxing — the woods having that freshly hosed down quality about them, the air lighter and easier on the eyes.

He came to a path on the right of the trail he called "Plan B" — after having plan A(s) fall apart so frequently, he had learned that it was a good idea to always have a plan B, even if he didn't know what that was. This was a route he would take now and then to mix things up. As he got closer today, it looked a little different than what he was used to seeing.

Right where these two paths connected, maybe twenty feet up, was the top of a large maple that had recently broken off. Maybe last night, maybe last week. Hard to say with these maples (they always seemed to be shedding body parts). Normally, the broken branches would be spread around the base of the parent tree, but not this one.

The thick end was wedged hard into the crotch of the tree it came from, the thin end had caught in the branches of another maple some distance away on the other side of Plan B.

He settled his small self down on a chunk of fallen alder nearby and looked up again at the precarious deadfall above — straight, stiff, and heavy at its thick base. Then arching across the path and snagged in the branches of the other tree. What had once been the wispy and straight tip of this large branch reaching up through the canopy now gently curved like an archer's bow under tension. It looked as if it would snap at any moment.

The branch was obviously stuck and that "Stuck-ness" struck a chord with him. He'd been there himself. Stuck.

He had his journal with him, as he did on occasion. He pulled it out.

He jotted down the date and scribbled a quick sketch that could have been a tree branch, then sat with the pen for a moment longer. The idea of "Stuck-ness" coming into focus.

"Stuckness can come at you out of nowhere," he began. "If I give in to being stuck and think I can sit back and put it all in the hands of destiny" — too much? he thought — nah — he continued — "would that act of giving in be like going to sleep? Do nothing to move myself forward, to make a better life for myself or others. Time slipping by."

He paused. This wasn't about the branch, was it? It was about times he'd been stuck himself. And that branch? Maybe it only represented a symptom of being stuck. A place he had found himself many times before.

"Counting on Destiny to step in and show me the way is not a plan." A little over the top, he thought, but it served the larger point he was circling. Maybe this works better, he thought. "Getting unstuck is not a sit back and let it happen sort of thing."

He watched a small beetle crawl up one side of his boot and down the other. He continued.

"But when I get up and step into the world around me —" he wrote it slowly, looking for the correct words, "— do things, make plans, set goals, engage, regardless of how difficult it might seem —"

A bit better, he thought, as he looked up and let his eyes relax.

"— working with little concern for appearances, making small steps forward here and there — could that be where harmony lives? And if so, maybe harmony is just destiny in disguise."

He looked back up at the branch. He thought about what might have caused it to break — maybe a weakness in the grain or some sort of decay or disease? This was the shedding of parts that new growth would replace, and over time those cast off pieces would feed the same tree that let them go.

Maybe the maple was exercising some agency after all.

"Could being stuck just be the act of holding on to a part of me that needs to go but I don't want to let go of?" Hmmm. He closed his book and sat quietly for a moment letting that sink in.

Nearby a robin declared its health and its superior ability to find food to anyone who would listen as the sunlight worked its way through the leaves landing in patches on the salal and across the fallen leaves and other material settled on the ground nearby.

He stood up from the alder with a pop and carried on down Plan B, which was a bit clearer now, passing under the maple branch wedged above. He glanced up once more as he passed beneath, leaving it all behind.

It would come down in its time.