Gratitude for Nature...

I love the outdoors. Always have.  Spending time in nature is something I have always treasured.  A good hike up a mountain has saved me more than once.  Camping by the edge of a creek, there is nothing quite like it.  Being out there away from everyone else, priceless.

I think I feel the most hopeful about life when I am in nature, and usually when I am alone. Nothing and no one to bump up against.  Just me and God and the natural world.  There is this screen that comes down, one I didn’t even really know was up until it comes down.  I can feel the veil between the life I live and experience, fade as the raw and natural world becomes my more present view.

There is something life affirming about mountain air, a clear stream, a beautiful vista.  Makes me realize how small me and all my problems are in comparison to everything else.  Life becomes timeless for me when I am in nature.  I see the landscape and cannot fail to notice the centuries it took to carve that particular view into being.  And I realize that me and all my petty issues are undergoing the same process, which seems to occur just beyond my notice and daily life.

Do mountains feel themselves being carved out by wind and water?  Do we?  How much of our lives occurs just beyond our understanding and experience?  How much of us is being created in a way and manner that escapes our notice most days?

I love the open sky, the shooting stars, the full moons, the quiet.  I love the connectedness I feel when I am away from the fray, and just present with all that is.  I am not sure where the house of God is, but I am quite sure that I have felt God most when out walking a trail alone with my dog.  Just me, her, the dusty trail and God.  Funny, how much I avoid that given how wonderful it makes me feel.

In our rush to accomplish and accumulate, we miss the nature of the every day living.  We fail to make time for how restorative the natural world is.  I do not think we were meant to live in cities.  I think the human spirit needs the wide open expanse of a Montana sky or the thundering roar of water plummeting.  I think the further we get away from this kind of life, the worse we become.  

I dream, daily, of a life that is removed from a town and long to replant myself among the redwoods.  Not so far away that I never see anyone again, but secluded, remoted, removed from the daily grind.  It feels like nature calling me back home.  And even though I live in a place that is remote and surrounded by natural beauty, I marvel at how often I choose to remain indoors.  I know nature heals me, so why do I avoid it, ever?

I am grateful for all the beautiful places that still exist, unspoiled by humans and our clamor for more.  I long for the time when I can spend my days writing, reading and walking through a valley, lost in thought and awe and with each footfall moving closer to a God of my understanding.

Again, still...