So here I am all at once, thrown into this brier patch, a beautiful place to be tossed, though I would not have chosen to get here this way. I still feel like a stranger in my own country, but less so than last month. Three months from now, will I be more content with my lot? Will I be by then so immersed in this place that I look like it, become invisible against it, evolving, camouflaged and part of the landscape myself? Will I become lost here, or found?

Gravity pulls me down and I lie on my back, on cool stone horizontal, before a mock-infinity of space, wondering: what is my place in this world of men and of words? Do I deserve to be so blessed among Earth’s teeming humanity? What must I do in the warmth of this gentle epiphany that is revealed to me tonight and how should I then live? Maybe I will try to find the words in the morning, after the house is quiet again and the fireflies have gone to bed and the world smells of heat and ozone and toast.

We approach each blind curve with care, and on slowing down, see the graceful way that light slips past hemlock branches and how the creek eddies flash in the shadows of rhododendrons. We would never see this on a fast road. As we near home one bend at a time, our meandering road becomes a welcomed part of the detoxification ritual that brings down our blood pressure, calms our racing minds, and brings us to center again on the simple act of living here in the present moment. I imagine I am as busy as my city friend, but I know I am not as hurried.

A revelation of radiant webs like prayers floating unseen above my head for fifty autumns has made me conversant with floating spiders. Perhaps they are angels. What wonders hide beneath my boots or hover in air just above my skin, I cannot imagine. Look up. Miracles must be everywhere.