In Nature...

It is a rainy day today. The aroma of soft rain on dense foliage reminded me of a watery hike I took a few years ago. It was a solitary hike up a steep well-marked mountain trail. It wasn't just hard walking, it was climbing and clinging and grabbing as I ascended a difficult path.

It was an intermittent misty and rainy day with a cool ambiance that more refreshed than chilled. Fog drifted up the climbing ledges in gossamer wafts of white and gray as the rain coated and washed the ascending trail into a slippery challange. Granite boulders, some the size of houses, blocked the path as I crawled, slid, scooted and climbed through rocky cuts with tiny cave like openings.

I loved the purity of the climb. The rain kept all other hikers, but one, from the slippery rocks and pine needle puddles and so it was just nature and me. It was pristine and primal with occasional surprising vistas from the cliffs to the lake below each bursting through grottos of granite and conifer sculptures.

It was renewing and inspiring and an experience filled with a fragrant ceremony. The eastern mountain laurel was in full bloom. Each pink and white blossom celebrated, not only the mist of the day, but the seeming appreciation of just being the beauty it was.

I met a weasel who fleetingly acknowledged my encroachment upon his home and path and a tiny finch who stayed much longer than expected singing on a branch not more than two feet away from my still and silent watch.

It was a glorious day.

When I got home and read the newspaper headlines I wondered what are we doing to ourselves?