When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things
We liked to test our limits in those early days. We drove plastic four-wheelers through the grass of the backyard, tearing up the hillside as we tested how hard we could push the whining engines. When the wheels spun uselessly on clods of clay, we sunk our fingernails into the ground, collapsing ant colonies and earthworm holes in our search for buried treasure. Once found, we clutched the arrowheads close to our little chests like the precious and exotic artifacts they were.
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