Inklings from Moss Rock

There's a tree growing out of the water here, but I wonder which was here first, the tulip poplar or the riverbed. I am grateful for the wide-open respites that can be found not so far from my ordinarily inorganic life. And I am grateful for those people who are happy to lay with me on boulders overlooking a little creek and write about whatever is in our souls. Not even talk, just write. Through my fringe of unruly bangs I can see Leah's yellow pumps, Lauren's brown flats and purple sweater. We don't fit in here, but there's no one to tell us otherwise. This is our world.

Nature never seems unfamiliar to me. It does not exist as a part of a system where there are, innately, any high expectations. Sometimes when I go into a new restaurant I am all anxiety because I don't understand how the system works. Part of me feels like I missed the part of the game where they explained the rules. Do I pay at the table? Am I supposed to clear my own dishes? Do I tip? But here in the woods there is none of that. The forest could care less whether or not it feels my footfall, and yet it still feels so personal to me. It is what I wish it to be.

I'm not sure if I'm in this system or out of it, but I know I'm not above it. I can enter it, alter it, appreciate it, or destroy parts of it, but it can too easily humble me as soon as I might venture to tame it or capture it. The wilderness without so quickly tempers and overwhelms the wilderness within. I know it's important to feel small in this way sometimes. For this moment, this is all there is, and it is enough. So much more than enough.

"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'm still breathing.