"It came to me while reflecting on that woodland encounter with the night that there are two very valuable spiritual gifts that simplicity gives to us.  It seems the more we can strip our lives down to essentials, the more deliberately and awake we can live;  with few...

Recently, Scot brought to my attention a poem by May Sarton called April in Maine: The days are cold and brown, Brown fields, no sign of green, Brown twigs, not even swelling, And dirty snow in the woods. But as the dark flows in The tree frogs begin Their shrill...

"All that is ripest and fairest in the wilderness is preserved and transmitted to us in the strain of the wood thrush.  This is the only bird whose note affects me like music, affects the flow and tenor of my thought, my fancy and imagination.  It lifts and...