Author: wapatangawilds

When I sit alone in a mountain forest, on the ground, back against a tree, or lie back in a grassy prairie, I feel free, all is still, yet it feels like all is in motion somehow, yesterday, today and tomorrow all seem to come together at the same time. Surrounded by the life in the trees, in the grass and in the soil, it’s easy to forget about life’s toil. I wonder how to hold on to this time, to not let it just slip away, I try to imprint it in my mind so when I lie down that night to sleep, there’s something there to find.

This is nice, switchgrass in the rising sun, coyotes howling in the distance, I’m sitting with insistence, forcing myself to stop, to slow down, look around, in the morning glow, in crunchy snow, sitting on a boulder, aware everyday I’m getting older, thinking about the past and how it feels so fast, and so I cling to the present moment, with conscious intent

I’m lounging in a patch of pine, on bare needles in the middle of snow where the winds have blown and the sun has melted, the sun is bright on me now and in the midst of all this snow I’m warm, I lean back against a Ponderosa trunk and look up, in this moment I’m in the mountains and they are in me

I look out and snow is falling, feels like time passing, and as I watch it fall I feel myself falling in it, getting older, like snow falls, like time passes, steady, unstoppable, unrelenting, one direction, time is moving, falling, all I can do is watch it fall, flakes of time are falling like the snow, I know I have to let it go, but I find myself holding on to all that has passed on by and who, so many memories, I see them in my mind, I hold them in my heart, but time keeps passing like the snow falling, brings a strangely mixed feeling of gladness and sadness, a melancholy joy, in this man still a boy, sitting still, yet never stopping

From where I sit, on Sugarloaf, I can see Audubon, I can see a track of moose, I can smell the spruce, I can hear a jay’s raucous cry, I can feel a tear in my eye, I can see a fir cone, I can be all alone, I can sit in the snow and be what I know

It is the first snow of the season, on the last day of the year, a flake floats in the air, a flake floats into my hair, I walk in the falling, among the aspen I find delight, and as the ground becomes white, I watch a flake fall on my hand, and I am loving this land, even though I know it cannot be, that it will ever love me

A nest in time, where I can rest, in nature’s sublime, alone, alive, in a time when falling flakes do their part to calm and fill my heart, they fall in this space, at such a leisurely pace, a frozen flurry in no hurry, I lean against a tree, so I can better see, a snowy dream above a mountain stream

To be the only one sitting on a fallen log, on a mountainside, in an evergreen forest of spruce and pine, in the wind, in the solitude, not looking for solutions, or conclusions, a chill in the air, among boulders and lichen in the shade, sun shining on patches of grass and dead wildflower stems, snowcapped peaks in the distance, scuffed with clouds, just here for the pause

I will go to find a wild, go to find my child, go to where the mountains lift me, to where the snowy winds drift me, into the timelessness of nature’s embrace, in the solitude of a wilderness space, feeling that earthly touch, I love so much

Into a wild, on a pine cone covered trail, early, when the colors are still pale, the canyon long, feeling strong, to run, a day begun, to hike, into the trees I so like, greeting a spruce blue, how are you, a swarm of firs, my heart stirs, doing some thing, while doing no thing, a stretch up and over a rock, no talk, stop, stand, blink, no think, focus on what I feel, in the quiet of the real