in the woods

 

 

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Thoreau.

I remember clearly my first introduction to Thoreau and that one line, that in someways, changed the path of my inner life. It was middle school, Mrs. Sobel. I am the kind of person that ties songs and thoughts to specific roads I am driving on while thinking or listening. The freeway underpass at E street. It will always be that place when I hear that line. I must have been repeating it to myself as I drove a few years later in my 65 mustang. I was studying the transcendentalists. That line, those years earlier, clicked at that moment; burned in. 

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A strong longing had been pulling at me to get into nature

to clear my head, 

to breathe. 

There is nothing else that so quickly can nourish my soul, focus my attention, shake out the fog of indecision or restlessness, as being in the quiet and solitude of nature. I ran the idea by D, booked the place, packed the bags and we were off the next morning. 

The girls love being in the mountains. They come alive in a different way. 

So do I. 

It feels essential.