Parkland

   For me, the natural world is most enjoyable when I am either in it alone, or as near to it as possible. I love it when I feel like the animals, trees and me are the only things in the world at that moment; if I knew a way to take it all in without actually being there, that might be ideal.

   As I look at what I just wrote, and think about how feelings of inner quiet and physical place may or may not relate, I question whether I actually mean to refer to being surrounded by trees as being somewhere. At these times, I usually feel like I more within them than around them.

   When I saw this old, hollowed-out tree trunk in the picture below, I found its' dark, shaded interior inviting and warm. It felt like the areas of parkland that I visit and covet the most; parts that seem hidden and unexplored.
   It dawns on me that I may be drawn to such locales because they represent a kind of physical realization of those places within me that feel equally unknowable and concealed. Perhaps this is so, yet if those places are repressed, why should I seek them out externally with such regularity?

   When I am listening to the sounds of birds calling, hearing leaves rustling on their branches, or seeing the clouds moving overhead in the early morning, I can be unaware of my own presence there. At times, I feel like there is nothing coming between us.