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On obstacles, patience, and the slow work of smoothing those leaves and branches try slowing the river’s flow; yet, they force raging water over a sharp rock— just hastening its smoothing — from “(the earth remembers)” On one stretch of the river there is a rock dam. After a storm, I like to stand beside it and see what the water has brought. Branches and leaves pile up against the rocks, a record of everything the river carried in the night. The water finds its way through a

On holding joy and sadness at the same time tell me, how can this way hold joy and sadness with the change of her breath? it’s the one yellow leaf that strikes me with joyful-sadness — from “(fiery melancholy)” In summer, the old way through the woods is a green tunnel. The canopy is dense, and Nature seems to welcome anyone who walks beneath her. I think of it as a loving embrace. Then autumn arrives and covers the same path with a stream of fallen leaves, fiery reds and yel

What the woods taught me about paying attention there aren’t any grand landscapes here—just the small things Nature nurtures and those things some tend to ignore as they walk along the Way — from “(no grand landscapes in Fallen Oaks Woods)” I wrote those lines in a small stretch of New England woods that has no mountain view and no dramatic overlook. It has a river, a pond, some old oaks, and a few rocks. For a long time, I half expected that to be a disappointment. It turned

There are days when we have too much energy and absolutely no idea what to do with it. Not necessarily physical energy. Sometimes it is emotional energy. Mental noise. Frustration. Curiosity. Anxiety about the future. A strange urge to change something. Ten ideas arriving at the same time. The feeling that you should be doing something, creating something, becoming something, but you cannot quite identify what that something is. So what do we often do? We scroll. We reorganiz

The river where you set your foot just now is gone— those waters giving way to this, now this. --Heraclitus, Fragments. Translated by Brooks Haxton I listen to an old recording. The music begins to flow, and suddenly I have a river. Why not? We speak of streams of music. Sound moves. A song begins, passes through time, and ends. I can step into that stream simply by listening. So I put on a Philosopher’s cloak and make a rather grand announcement: Heraclitus was wrong! There