wild places

"People need wild places.  Whether or not we think we do, we do.  We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it.  We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers.  To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running day calendar.  Wildness puts us in our place.  It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd.  It reminds us why, in those cases in which our plans might influence many future generations, we ought to choose carefully.  Looking out on a clean plank of planet earth, we can get shaken right down to the bone by the bronze-eyed possibility of lives that are not our own."


Barbara Kingsolver, from "Small Wonders"



Oh, I do so love me some Barbara Kingsolver.

I find that nothing quite brings me back to center like getting out there.  Some days it's as simple as getting my hands in the dirt in the garden.  Other days it requires more.  A long hike maybe, or a good long while spent staring at and listening to moving water.

And a waterfall?  Forget about it.  That's my church.

I didn't do anything amazing outdoors today.  I tended to the garden and took Claire to a park with a creek to play with some friends.  Though I suppose even these things, in some way, are amazing.  "Nature" and "wild places" really can mean so many different things and take on so many different faces.  I am quite grateful for my many varied encounters with wild places.