Log Post 20, Week 20–Sacred Nature

Many apologies for posting on Sunday this time—life gets in the way, and we have to respect that (besides, I wondered if more people pay attention on Mondays than on Fridays). In the 20^th chapter of 30 Perfect Days, called “Sacred Nature,” I quote Margaret Atwood, who said that at the end of the day in the spring, we should smell like mud. Now that the snow is starting to melt and I might just see crocuses in a few days, I can think about immersing in the outdoors. I would rather walk in the woods than go to church, but it’s a really good day when I can do both. I know God’s with us as we walk and talk and experience the outdoors. What does the longing to live in the woods, away from civilization, mean? In Thoreau’s Walden, Thoreau journals about living by one’s self and being with God and Nature at Walden Pond. I still remember the solitude, reflection, ease of day that Cynthia Huntington wrote about in The Salt House: A Summer on the Dunes of Cape Cod – I must have read that book 20 years ago, and I don’t own it. I once read a book about storms in the Outer Banks written by Henry Beston called The Outermost House, where a man tried to be faithful in telling his experience of living within nature. Annie Dillard writes about hiking through the woods and noticing the daily changes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. These memoirs are slow, meandering, and thoughtful, and I like them just the way they are—poetry in nature put on paper. What are your favorite outdoor spaces, your sacred spaces? Do you experience God in your sacred space? For more on the book, go to https://www.claudiajtaller.com/30-perfect-days-finding-abundance-in-everyday-life/.