I ran away to the wilderness. My friend, Kate, and I have been enjoying the resort, our vacation and the wilderness that is a part of it. We hiked morning and afternoon today, a total of over eight miles. Henry David Thoreau reminds us why it’s so important –
We need the tonic of wildness:To wade sometimes in the meadows
where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk,
and hear the booming of the snipe;
To smell the whispering sedge where only
some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest,
and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.
At the same time we are earnest to explore and learn,
we require that all things be mysterious unexplorable,
that land and sea be infinitely wild,
unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.
where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk,
and hear the booming of the snipe;
To smell the whispering sedge where only
some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest,
and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.
At the same time we are earnest to explore and learn,
we require that all things be mysterious unexplorable,
that land and sea be infinitely wild,
unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.
We can never have enough of nature,
We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor,
vast and titanic features:
The sea-coast with its wrecks,
the wilderness with its living and decaying trees,
the thunder cloud, the rain that lasts three weeks
and produces freshets.
We need to witness our own limits transgressed,
and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.
We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor,
vast and titanic features:
The sea-coast with its wrecks,
the wilderness with its living and decaying trees,
the thunder cloud, the rain that lasts three weeks
and produces freshets.
We need to witness our own limits transgressed,
and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.
Closing my laptop now. More about this retreat and my time away later.
there's no place like gnome. 
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