I’m not a regular participant on the spirituality threads because I’m not especially spiritual. But reading the nature thread from November got me thinking. We live in an apartment and our only outdoor spaces are a deck off our bedroom and a narrower patio downstairs, off the living room. While I enjoy sitting in the deck and reading books it’s not ‘nature’ by almost any definition of nature. And thankfully there are no leaves to mulch.
However, Over the past year or so I’ve been getting out of the city every weekend, oftentimes both days, to go hiking in various county parks and various places in the golden gate national recreation area. Today as I was slogging up a 1,200 foot elevation gain in the middle of a gorgeous redwood forest just south of the city I realized that the only time when I truly forget about my problems or the nation’s problems, or any problems bigger than ‘my foot hurts’ is when I’m out hiking. Going uphill I am focused on ‘inhale, two, three, exhale, two, three’ in time with my steps and going downhill I tend to focus on ‘wow! This place is beautiful.’ Occasionally I stop to take a picture or two but they just don’t do justice to how I feel in the moment.