“Slow down and taste and smell and hear, and let your senses come alive. If you want a royal road to mysticism, sit down quietly and listen to all the sounds around you. You do not focus on any one sound; you try to hear them all. Oh, you’ll see the miracles that happen to…
“Deep in the forest there is something sacred that exists without a perceptible function. This is the central core, the navel of the world, and I want to return to that place.” — Hayao Miyazaki Last month I walked through a forest with several coworkers on a group hike. One of them commented that the…
In the golden hour before the dawn the black-capped chickadees talked amongst themselves, adding more and more high-pitched “dee-dee-dee’s” to their song the closer I walk to them. I’m the intruding loner early in the morning and this is their warning to each other. I may live here, but this isn’t my backyard—it’s always belonged…
After a few nights in New York and New Jersey, I returned to New Hampshire to reflect on the differences. I’d hiked in pristine woodland next to gorgeous streams, the kind of stuff you see regularly in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I’d stayed in a beautiful resort surrounded by hills. I’d eaten at…
“If there seems to be no communication between you and the people around you, try to draw close to those things that will not ever leave you. The nights are still there and the winds that roam through the trees and over many lands.” — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet We’re often…
“What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers…
“The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson Last night offered a small chance to see the northern lights as the skies cleared just enough to open up the universe. What are you to do with an opportunity like that but chase after it? With son and daughter as my…
We are the first double-leaf sprout, two inches out of the ground. We need rain, or we may not grow more than this. — Rumi The rain rolled in right on schedule, really, timed to mask the Aurora Borealis thoroughly and keep my mind from wandering north. Quietly scheming to drop everything and drive as…
“We do not know how life is going to turn out. Therefore the story has no beginning, and the end can only be vaguely hinted at. The life of man is a dubious experiment. It is a tremendous phenomenon only in numerical terms. Individually, it is so fleeting, so insufficient, that it is literally a…
Mid-March brought the turkeys back. They roost high in the white pine trees at the edge of the forest, protected from the coyotes, bobcats and other predators who long for a turkey dinner. They’re silent during the early morning hours until something disturbs them. This morning that something was me. Coffee in hand, I walked…
