“Ten times a day something happens to me like this –
some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell.
This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know:
that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”
-Mary Oliver
“We were not meant to live shallow lives, pocked by meaningless routines and the secondary satisfactions of happy hour. We are the inheritors of an amazing lineage, rippling with memories of life lived intimately with bison and gazelle, raven and the night sky.We are designed to encounter this life with amazement and wonder, not resignation and endurance. This is at the very heart of our grief and sorrow.The dream of full-throated living, woven into our very being, has often been forgotten and neglected, replaced by a societal fiction of productivity and material gain. No wonder we seek distractions.Every sorrow we carry extends from the absence of what we require to stay engaged in this “one wild and precious life”.-Francis Weller
“There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties”
-John Muir
“I walked on, talking in my head. In all the miles no silence lived. Inside my thoughts, I realized finally that, more than in wind or cold or Breakup, the power and absoluteness of wild earth resided in its huge uncompromising silence.”
-Seth Kantner (from my favorite book of this year, Ordinary Wolves)
“There comes a day, somewhere in the middle of every woman’s life, when Mother Nature herself stands behind us and wraps her arms around our shoulders, whispering
It’s time.
You have taken enough now. It’s time to stop growing up, stop growing older and start growing wiser and wilder.
There are adventures still waiting on you and this time, you will enjoy them with the vision of wisdom and the companionship of hindsight, and you will really let go.
It’s time to stop the madness of comparison and the ridicule of schedule and conformity and start experiencing the joys that a life, free of containment and guilt, can bring.
She will shake your shoulders gently and remind you that you’ve done your bit. You’ve given too much, cared too much, you’ve suffered too much.
You’ve bought the book, as it were, and worn the t-shirt.
Worse, you’ve worn the chains and carried the weight of a burden far too heavy for your shoulders.
It’s time, she will say.
Let it go, really let it go and feel the freedom of the fresh, clean spaces within you. Fill them with discovery, love and laughter. Fill yourself so full you will no longer fear what is ahead and instead you will greet each day with the excitement of a child.
She will remind you that if you choose to stop caring what other people think of you and instead care what you think of you, you will experience a new era of your life you never dreamed possible.
It’s time she will say…
to write the ending, or new beginning, of your own story.”
-Donna Ashworth
“There is a love of wild nature in everybody.”
-John Muir
