It's not all about the books: How to read the oceans of trees and lakes of mirrors.

So my weekend was more about reading the land, and less about reading a book (although I started rereading "Catcher in the Rye" and laughed out loud at Holden Caulfield). I went backpacking in the Adirondacks for the long weekend with the roommates, are here are a few of the favorite things that I read:


4 kids fully outfitted with mini packs, walking sticks and bandanas walking far enough ahead of their parents to feel completely independent and for their pretending to seem real. I turned around to watch them tackle a huge mound of unmelted snow and was reminded of my own adventuring of the sort...and daydreamed about that and "Swallows and Amazons" (the best kid adventure book other than maybe Narnia) all afternoon.

Keeping my eyes open for bear tracks and imagining stories about what would happen if we saw one (and feeling ready, I might add. if this were grizzly country it would be another story, though.)

The peeling sycamore bark that was scattered all over like paper shavings, as if they had a story they wanted to tell.

The scent of fresh pine. It hits the heart directly.

Watching the light change over a lake; both in the eveningtime and in between rainstorms.

Contemplating a graveyard, as Sarah aptly named it, of trees that lie at the base of a mountain after an avalanche brought them down. Thinking about not having the ability to get up after a fall. Thinking about how the way we view life (from the top of a mountain or the bottom) can impact our vision.


And of course laughing with these favorites:

"From Here You Can Almost See the Sea"

Seriously: (In the background) Firth of Forth (Scottish Gaelic: Linne Foirthe) is the estuary or firth of Scotland's River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea between Fife to the north, and West Lothian, the City of Edinburgh, and East Lothian to the south. And can I just say how happy it makes me that there are real places with names like "Lothian" and they don't just belong in books?

Literally: One can almost see the ocean from our terrace with the view of the New York Harbor.





But even more than the literal sea, let me say this:
(and by "this" I mean quoting my dear Clive Staples Lewis)
Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring and which beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for?

and maybe one more...
"For all images and sensations, if idolatrously mistaken for joy itself, soon honestly confessed themselves inadequate. All said, in the last resort: It is not I. I am only a reminder. Look! Look! What do I remind you of?"

That's all.