Monday, March 30, 2009

"...finding it where you are."

I may have gone away, but not to find a better place or even a better way. I learned very early that the neighbor has crabgrass same as I do. I'll go on my "green visit" and love it there, but I'll love my home just as much when I return, because I know the "trick of living" where I am, although I find it neither slow nor all that terribly difficult to go to Walden.

Going to Walden

It isn't very far as highways lie.
I might be back by nightfall, having seen
The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water.
Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.
They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:
How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!

Many have gone, and think me half a fool
To miss a day away in the cool country.
Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,
Going to Walden is not so easy a thing
As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult
Trick of living, and finding it where you are.

--Mary Oliver

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