I go to the woods

“It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world.”
— Mary Oliver, Invitation

We all go someplace to work things out: a favorite chair next to a window, the arms of a loved one, the kitchen, the garden, the ocean, some exotic somewhere with frangipani-scented air.

Me? I go to the woods. Or the mountains. Near or far. I go for hard hikes that make me sweat. I pound whatever needs to be pounded into the earth, Mother Earth, Pachamama. You know, the Stuff of Life: grief, hurt, anger, fear. She takes it and remakes it. And almost always this works. I return lighter, sometimes even (if only temporarily) enlightened. I return with this Mary Oliver line in my head.

And also, of course, and predictably, Wendell Berry: “For a time/ I rest in the grace of the world and I am free.”

Today I am tired from a hard day of mountain hiking in the snow at 6,000 feet. It’s the good kind of tired. I am scoured clean of dark thoughts. Of all thoughts. Thus I offer these images I made (as photographers are supposed to say, not “pictures I took”) of places–near and far– that have both challenged me and offered me solace, places where I have felt free and joyful.