When things all seem too much, what better solace than a reminder that they are, provided you’re willing to zoom out a bit, indistinguishable from nothing at all? The anxieties that clutter the average life–relationship troubles, status, rivalries, money worries–shrink instantly down to irrelevance. So do pandemics and presidencies, for that matter: the cosmos carriesContinue reading “Cosmic Insignificance Therapy”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Buzzed
“What I like” isn’t what’s good for me. “What I like” is familiar, what’s good for me is foreign and unknown. Charles Wright I have a memorable recollection of my first encounter with a bee, not because I was stung, but because a happy afternoon walking barefoot in the grass with my friend, Patty, wasContinue reading “Buzzed”
Making the Leap
Our bodies are shot with mortality. Our legs are fear, and our arms are time. These chill humors seep through our capillaries, weighting each cell with an icy dab of nonbeing, and that dab grows and swells and sucks the cells dry. That is why physical courage is so important–it fills, as it were, theContinue reading “Making the Leap”
Not Dead Yet
The most fundamental thing we fail to appreciate about the world. . .is how bafflingly astonishing it is that it’s there at all—the fact that there is anything rather than nothing. Oliver Burkeman in Four Thousand Weeks When I started this blog a little over a year ago, I envisioned it as a place toContinue reading “Not Dead Yet”
Rosy’s Backpack
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Mary Oliver in Wild Geese A few years before I retired I added a pop-up camperContinue reading “Rosy’s Backpack”
Getting the Grace
Give me the courage to stand the pain to get the grace. Flannery O’Connor Fellow hikers who read my blog know how much the trail toughens us up for life. Almost every hiker has had that experience, sometimes at the end of a long day of hiking. Out of water perhaps, hot and tired, andContinue reading “Getting the Grace”
Things Best Known
Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last, In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best. The folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest; Happiness, knowledge, not in another place, but this place–not for another hour, but this hour. Walt Whitman William AtkinsContinue reading “Things Best Known”
Something to Touch and Hold
(I)t’s nice to have something you can hold and actually touch. 9-Year old Lucia Olson, speaking of her neighborhood newspaper When I first started hiking alone in my early twenties, I was much more miserly about the weight of my pack than I would become in future years on the trail. Equipment was substantially heavierContinue reading “Something to Touch and Hold”
A Sheltered Life
I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within. Eudora Welty Each week when I start work on a new post, I select the topic and then search for a quote I think will enhance whatever itContinue reading “A Sheltered Life”
Surprised on Sand Ridge
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. Mary Oliver Many years ago for my annual trek in the wilderness I chose a route that was quite different from the backpacking trips I usually took. ForContinue reading “Surprised on Sand Ridge”
The Solitude Trail 