life in the woods

Thoreau went to the woods because he wanted to live deliberately. I don't come to the woods to live my life, but to find some, to breathe deeply that pungent and elusive quality wisping among the stalks and stems, careless but not ambivalent to me as it meanders the ancient paths hoping for some soul to extinguish itself upon. I come to the woods to breathe deeply of life when I find it. At once I find life's breath and lose my own in moments whelming with wonder, beauty, and pleasure. I walk into a meadow, verdant, cool, and moist with spring, a green river of life banked by aspens and sage, rolling down the foothills. The gray clouds play with the sun, spreading blankets of warm light and cool shade, teasing me with a choice I anyways cannot make. Gentle raindrops tap my sunbaked cheeks and bare shoulders, spending all at once on me the refreshment they carried miles and miles across and above the earth. The thick pines and firs at the edge of the meadow stretch for the sky, and beyond a lonely mountain sits like a ruddy green giant covered by a tartan quilt of evergreens bleeding red, bearing two distinguished patches of white, the last vestiges of winter as it ages and yields to spring. The mountain calls to me, even dares me to come and try my brawn against its mass, and I accede. I close my eyes to breathe it all in and my soul utters, unprompted, “almost heaven”. At once an old red fox crosses the meadow in front of me, calmly trotting from side to side, cover to cover. Our accepting eyes meet and my breath is lost. It is in this moment that I am most aware of the nature of life. I did not arrange this moment, and could not. This moment was made for me, and would happen without me. I come to the woods to breathe deeply of life when I find it, or rather to breathe deeply of life when it finds me. It is only given freely, and it must be freely received.

And now the sun’s light drifts beyond the meadow’s reach. That moment is gone. The tallest evergreens silhouette themselves out of the black mountain curves into the deepest of blues. And the moon rises.

Here is no home to right or wrong or any of their children.

There is just life to find and to be found by.