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
On day three of our trip, we trekked to Amsterdam Centraal to catch an early train to The Hague, a city most famous for hosting the UN’s International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. The city’s name often graced manila envelopes when I worked a summer at an attorney’s office, but I’d not really considered going there until it came up on a list of the best Christmas markets in the Netherlands.
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