Sometimes I find life kind of overwhelming. On those days, I really like to go to the woods. There’s a place I go to in Mill Valley, a walk that takes about 35 to 45 minutes that ends at a waterfall, and I delight in taking this walk. At the waterfall, I can smell the air of the forest, and sometimes the fresh air of the ocean not too far way, meeting at the same place. The process of walking here is like shedding layers of clothes, shedding the cares of life, and slipping, falling, surrendering to meditation, a sense of unity, where self and Universe become one, and I cannot know whether the Universe creates me, or I create the Universe. It is just so, it is just this. And in having this experience, this meditation, I feel revived, cleansed, new. In truth, I can often have the same experience in my own room, a place that’s quiet, and just let myself settle down, settle down and fall into that state of being present, fully in the moment at hand. So a mystical woodland walk can happen anywhere, even in one’s apartment, or home, or perhaps in some quiet room in a coffeehouse.
The above text is based on an audio snapshot recorded with a Sony microcassete recorder, passed the audio to my computer, edited it, and converted to mp3. The sound is poor, but you can hear the waterfall in the background. It's raw and real - in the spirit of being in the woods.
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