Finding the light

I slid off the trail and let my daypack fall from my shoulder to the duff below. For the first time in 15 weeks, my soul felt like it was loose, not lassoed by its feet and dragged behind its own horse.

I had been so wrapped up in graduate school and work that I had lost touch with my sense of feeling alive, of being connected to anything besides production. Mostly I had lost a sense of connection with the ground of being—that sense that the universe actually has a plan, even if we humans are not listening to it; that sense that I am connected to something larger than myself.

Above the tree line in Colorado's alpine terrain, I saw intense beauty. It was a tangible reminder of all that is alive and organized in harmony, all that invites one to quietly listen and marvel. To realize for a moment that we are part of this system, the definition of beauty. Even the geometry of the tiniest pink and white asters, no larger than a baby’s tiny pinky nail, shout that they are not a trivial accident.