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The Peace of Wild Things

I’m heading out to go camping in Zion National Park for a few days, starting at the crack of dawn tomorrow. I’ll be completely off the grid until late Sunday, and to tell you the truth, I’m looking forward to it. I don’t do it enough.

I’ll leave you with this poem, brought to my attention in quite a timely fashion by Heather:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry
“The Peace of Wild Things”