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It is hard to feel the changes in the air, when it is just another hot day in August, when even the wild sumac is wilting from the heat and the dry, when even the lambsquarter is drooping, and there is a haze from wildfire smoke in the sky. There is the feeling of tired, the magic of Spring is long gone, blossoms are spent, the green grass is brown and bent, seeds drop to the ground, time, to me, feels like it is passing slower. I am waiting out the summer, one day at a time. But even in the heat today, I am also aware the earth still spins on its axis, still orbits the sun, the moon still moves through its phases, the path ahead is set. The spiders still spin their webs, the young birds have learned to fly, every morning is still a new day, the Nuttall’s Sunflower are still blooming as usual in August, so after all, it is only just another hot August day, it will not stay.

6:55 am, August 20, 2026, 60 degrees, sitting in a breath of dawn air, in my rocking chair, waiting. I am waiting for the sun to shine on a sunflower in our home garden, and at 71, waiting for death too, not in a morbid mood kind of way, just waiting in the reality of death coming as sure as the sun is rising, yet still breathing every breath of life with joy. I am still looking forward to the all the life to come, enjoying each bloom of a new flower, each bee or butterfly that visits, each new snowflake falling, each songbird calling, and my grandchildren’s laughs and knowing there are still more trails to follow, more wilds to wander, more wilderness miles, more snows to set my face into, more smiles. So, this morning as I rock back and forth in my chair, pondering my life’s path ahead, how I choose to embrace it, choose to face it, is to measure life not in years and especially not in remembered blunders, but to try to revel, as much as I am able, in being alive and immerse myself in its still endless life wonders. 

Last night I lay in bed, in the dark, my thoughts turning to where I would want to wander in nature this morning, I pondered my destination, after some consideration, a place came to mind, a place without a name but I knew that was it, without hesitation.  So, in the dawn, I was gone, using muscle and bones, walking from a trailhead under fir tree cones, where deer do suddenly appear, or a black squirrel with tufted ear,  going to a place where I know I will likely here the caws of a crow,  where time as measured in seconds, minutes, hours, months or years, does not exist, where the mood is gentle and there’s no pace that will insist, where the quiet pervades my existence without insistence, where I can breathe a sigh of relief, as I lie on the ground and marvel at the beauty of a fallen red leaf, even though it is only August in its late teens, and it comes to me as I walk, to this place, with no name, it will now be known to me as Without Hesitation.  

I love walking or sitting in nature, all alone, just observing and listening, just me, myself and I, is all the company I need or want or seek, keeping company with myself is completely satisfying, just me and my mind, no screens, no music, me, myself and I, we like each other’s company, we like to meet in nature’s infinity, we neither seek nor desire to converse, we are there to breathe, to go slow, to be quiet, to stop thinking, we are there to observe, to listen, to move in silence, to sit in wonder, to experience what it feels like to know we are alive.

Where the trail bends, appeals to me, more than where the trail ends. I hear it talk of life’s walk, with its many twists and turns, yet today I plunge on straight ahead, off the trail, going where my heart yearns. Looking ahead I see a doe and her fawn, and as quickly as I see them, they are gone. As I wander, I see blooms of bluebells, growing along the steep fells. I find a sitting log and take a seat, wondering what else I might meet, and a squirrel scolds me, as it scrambles up a tree. I recline, thinking about the silent solitude in these wilderness reprieves, as the sunlight, gentle today, dapples the woodland tree leaves. They shimmer as they flutter in the breeze that blows and a wonderful thought inside me grows. Out here, on my own, all alone, in this wilderness serene, I am the only person on our entire globe, seeing and feeling this peaceful scene.

Leaning my back into a blue spruce trunk feels so calming and secure as I look at falling snow on a day in May covering branches of evergreens and new green leaves of Aspen. It’s time to turn off the noise, time to turn off the thinking and decision making, and just be, like this tree. I wonder about forever. I know times like this always end, and every day ends in night and every night ends in light, and even the source of that light, the Sun, will end. It seems to me that forever is in the now, and life is forever lived in the now, until the now is no more. Now is all I will ever have, and yet even that I can’t hold onto, it passes with each moment into the next now, and on and on until I look back and realize that, that now is in the past, and the now I’m in now, was what was the future, but only for now, as it too becomes the past, that is forever, if time is not infinite. Then I step away from the comfort of this tree, of this moment and walk on, ever looking for the next tree to lean back into, along this trail I follow now, that like all trails, ever leads to forever. 

Five thousand feet above home, on a winter roam in a high mountain Spring among tall firs, by a mountain pond, the air flows with flakes in a whirl, I’m pulled into the air’s movement as it snows, my heart swirled, up here feels like a different world, down below redbud and daffodil blooms are already done and Spring sprouts green, but up here in an instant I’m transported as if to another planet distant, flakes fill the air, I move through it, into it, in silence, in solitude, breathing it all in, I stop and time stops with me, I sit down on a log under a tree, I lean back, look up, watching the flakes dancing, it is mesmerizing, entrancing, snow-white flakes sifting through evergreen and Aspen gray, I’m getting old, yet finally getting to obey, an old calling, sitting in the falling.

Pasque flowers, no snow, no rain, awaiting the sun to rise over the tree covered ridge, and light the blooms, to take a photo, something to take with me, they are still in the shadows, for now, I’m sitting in a pine forest on a dead log, in the wait, and it seems to me I need more of that in my life, sitting in the waiting, enjoying it, not dragged by the time in my head, that says to move, to go, out here the pace never changes, probably the most timeless sense I’m ever to feel, watching the sunlight creep along the ground, ever closer, while I wait among the plant life so resident, the longer I sit the more I notice them, their details of colors, shapes, the textures, the intricacy, the integration, and their comfortable presence among diversity, I’m aware I’m a visitor, I breathe deep of their sense of comfort, I’m the one thing that stands out as different, but they don’t seem to mind, we wait together for the sunlight, and the life energy it brings, sitting in the wait.

Sun not yet rising, not so surprising, it’s still dark, there’s no song of the meadowlark, there’s no light, seems no end to the night,  I wait impatient, yet, expecting just another day, such a sad thing to say,  I open wide my eyes, as clouds on the horizon finally begin painting a sunrise,  through a hole in the clouds I can see the sun, another morning begun, forming out of the dark, out of the night, into the light, my hope rising in the hidden sun, in another day begun, and now I can see a meadowlark and as it sings, it seems to say, no new day is just another day

Still, I sit,

While setting moon still sits full in the sky,

And moonbirds sit still in a leafless treetop in a cold wind,

Bare branches speak of leaves fallen to the ground,

Not long ago green and full of life, now brown and blown away, life and death passing,

Near me, with seed already dropped, winter grasses quiver, as I begin to shiver,

Yet as daylight grows,

Still I sit.