lose yourself in nature and find yourself

Saturday morning was my state park clean up day. As I was driving home, with a busy day ahead, I realized something.

I felt at peace.

The quiet of the woods helps quiet my mind. For once, I could just be in the present moment, hear nothing else from those normally loud voices within. When I'm there, the only thing that is important is what is happening right then: hack the vines, clear the trail, chop the wood, cut the grass. It's healing and it's oh so necessary.

In the woods we become our most basic self, not this modern version that is rift with trauma and outside influence. We are in the moment, enjoying the physicality of the experience and not hearing the media, not encumbered by work, not focusing 20 steps ahead. There are no car noises, no people yelling or phones ringing, no pumping music. There is wind, birds, the crunch of branches or rustle of leaves... or somethings nothing at all.

At times like that, I can understand the urge to run away from it all, to go to the woods and look at the most basic of lives. Just yourself, your family, existing with only the daily work of hunting and gathering your own food, working on your shelter, and living authentically as yourself.

But I really love mankind, I love regularly being around people, and I want to do something to make this world a better place. So that means these monthly excursions into the woods are the closest that I will get to living that solitary life. In those moments though, when I get lost in nature, that is when I find myself.