Sometimes the need arises: I look at my life, I feel an itch of some kind, a restlessness, or a frustration, or a lack of motivation for the daily tasks… I realize that the phone in my hand has started to become permanently attached and my fingers need to remember how to tie a taut line rather than swipe from one screen to the next…

At times like this I turn to my husband and say:

“I need to sleep on the ground”

Of course, this simple statement represents more than just the act of lying on the earth at night, it means that I will leave behind my fast paced mentality and slow and settle into the rhythms of nature. I will not answer calls, reply to emails, texts, or scroll through various social media feeds on an all-too frequent basis.

My days will only be filled with experiences…

the doing part of life…

I will feed myself, pack camp, move through the world with eyes, ears, and skin tasting the flavors of the day, encounter whatever may come, and eventually arrive at a place I may or may not have already chosen, and complete the day-long life cycle as the sunlight surrenders to the night. I will feel the support of the soil beneath me. I will hear the millions of sounds that awaken in the dark. I will be still and return to the earth.

Old growth Tulip Poplar in Joyce Kilmer- Slickrock Wilderness, NC September 2015

Cautious friend. September 2015 — Cautious friend. September 2015

Once again, Mary Oliver says is best:

“I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.”

A clearing sky begins to pinken over the blue ridges. Semptember 2015

Thankfully, my husband gets it, and supports this practice 100%... because he knows that I return as a truer version of myself.

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