A Day in the Woods

She was going to think about her week. But that all seemed too small now. A sense of adventure overwhelmed her. The spirit of adventure is fiery. It set her heart pounding and her feet racing. All the others on her path stumbled and wobbled with uncertainty across the rocky, tangled terrain, their grimaces suggesting their apparent alienation and discomfort by their unknown surroundings. But she moved with such speed and unwavering grace that she seemed to be a ghost, gliding over the tangles of tree roots and tough clusters of underbrush. And soon she outran them all.

Her thumping heart led her on with involuntary persistence - over, through, past, around. Only occasionally did she indulge

in a moment to avert her eyes from the trail she was so committed to. When she did, what wonder filled her beating heart as her eyes scanned the canopy above her and she noticed the air on her skin.

Her limber ankles carried her on, the bottoms of her feet molding over every twig, rock, and leaf beneath her. She wanted nature to know that she did not expect it to change for her. She took polite care to exist as organically and intimately within it as one of its own lofty trees.

Her heart changed with the mood of the terrain. From rocky riverbeds, over which water no longer coursed, to pools of water, splashing cheerfully, fed by many falls at once, to dry grassy underbrush that came to her waist, to coves of tree roots pooled and caked with mud from water being plenty. All these places she loved just the same, for they were part of a place whose mysterious confidence calmed her.

How great to visit a place unchanging in its splendor - to drink in the joys of summer, and to delight in the ease of being outdoors, with the weather so kind - to exist in an atmosphere rich with lively sounds of creatures moving, birds chirping, and water churning into music. - a place alive with sunlight coming through the green, creating the most perfect highlights and shadows, and the loveliest lace patterns. - a place so real with the smell of green and dirt, and unpopulated air that only shares oxygen with the trees.

So great a comfort this place was to her, it set her senses tingling with the enchantment of feeling so safe in her raw exposure to the elements.

She thought for a fleeting moment of lying there in the dirt for a few days to pledge her love for the gritty beauty of nature.

She didn't; Instead her heart trembled with the magnitude of the mysteries of the earth that numbered too many for her to ever uncover. And maybe that right there is the very reason that each small expedition of hers, so short it barely tapped the surface of those mysteries at the heart of the earth, felt as special as it did.

She drank in the last fresh sweet smells of the morning, and thanked the place for its loveliness. Then she kissed her sanctuary goodbye, unsure whether she would ever have time to return to it again, with all the other wondrous places that demanded exploration.