I’ve logged more experience than most with simplicity and the complexity you discover inside simplicity, minimalism and asocial behavior, endurance and landscape.
Here is the truth: I think some deep wisdom inside me (a) sensed the stress, (b) was terrified for me, and (c) gave me something new and hard to focus on in order to prevent me from lapsing into a despair coma — and also to keep me from having a jelly jar of wine in my hand.
Subscribe and Save up to 55%
While people all over the world chanted and prayed for a miracle, we stood in the woods with binoculars trained on a pair of bluebirds flitting from branch to branch, tiny chests puffed out in the chill morning air. And for those few moments, mud frozen beneath our feet and not a single golden leaf stirring on the beech tree, I did not think about a virus entering my body after turning a doorknob or shaking someone’s hand or touching my own face. It was as if those two bluebirds became parts of us freed at last from worry — our tufted, lighter bodies now lifting higher and higher, like words meant for whatever god might still be listening.
James Crews