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Yesterday I explored a new route to a trail I've walked many times before and had a funny experience.

I had climbed a steep ridge that I suspected might link up with the trail I'd been on before. As I came close to the trail, I began to have a very strong feeling of familiarity and the sense that I would soon find it.

This feeling peaked as I actually did find the trail. But as I stood on the trail and looked around, I couldn't recognize where I was at all. As far as I know it's the only trail in that area, and I remembered my previous feeling of anticipation and familiarity, so I was fairly certain I was where I thought I was.

I walked down the trail and it took me several minutes to begin recognizing anything. During that time I felt profoundly uneasy, almost doomed. Even after I had passed distinctive landmarks that absolutely cemented my intellectually knowledge that I was on a familiar trail, the uneasyness and the seeming unfamiliarity of the trail persisted, slowly fading over the next minutes.

I suspect I was experiencing in fairly concrete form the connecting of two previously separated contexts. When we come to a familiar place in an unfamiliar way, we must be building new connections.

My previous experiences of the trail were very linear whereas my route finding up the ridge was exploratory and much more loosely bound, and perhaps that difference made it all the harder for my brain to accept the familiar.



Dated: 02/10/2003