Stems & Twigs

 

You may think that stems and twigs might be all you see when you take a walk in the woods. Bill McKibben summarizes this experience best with his profound words. “I think people who don't know the woods very well sometimes imagine it as a kind of undifferentiated mass of greenery, an endless continuation of the wall of trees they see lining the road. And I think they wonder how it could hold anyone's interest for very long, being all so much the same. But in truth I have a list of a hundred places in my own town I haven't been yet. Quaking bogs to walk on; ponds I've never seen in the fall (I've seen them in the summer - but that's a different pond). That list gets longer every year, the more I learn, and doubtless it will grow until the day I die. So many glades; so little time.”

Remember, there’s more than stems and twigs in the woods. Often times, imagination, creativity, or a much needed boost of energy can be discovered just when you need it most. Or it may be the best ‘quiet’ place to contemplate and to think. If you really listen, you might hear the sound of your own breath, your feet swishing against the stems and twigs, maybe a bird flitting about and nothing else. Yeah, there may be a few bugs to battle at this time of year but I always find something interesting when I truly explore the woods. 

So if you can, before the summer ends, find some time for a walk in the woods. As C.S. Lewis once penned, “Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.”    

Image by Ann Bilowz ©  

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