Crunchy Granola

Well, I stayed up in NH at the condo until yesterday afternoon. It was pretty great to be where it's so quiet--you feel like you can actually breathe a little bit. I love the city, but it's nice to be able to drive a couple hours to the middle of nowhere (read: no Sprint service; ok, so that doesn't have to be the middle of nowhere). I'm not your regular crunchy granola girl and I don't enjoy camping out under the stars, but I have to say I've experienced God in the most profound ways through nature. It's just so much bigger than we are and we didn't do a thing to create it.

One of my favorite memories of the outdoors happened when I was in college. A friend dragged me out in the freezing cold one late November night to the middle of nowhere (this took about 10 minutes' drive from my campus). He somehow coaxed me onto this abandoned railroad bridge over a gorge. I'm just glad I couldn't fathom how high up we were when he told me because I couldn't see it. (You better believe I would have NEVER walked out there in the daytime.) It was a sacrifice I had to make for the view of the Leonid meteor shower. It was a really an amazing viewing year for that. I think we were out there for at least a couple hours, just watching and talking in the weighty quiet of the Pennsylvania forest.

Moments like that don't happen every time I'm in the midst of trees, but I'm happy to have them to remember and to have the hope of more in the future.

Being outdoors is like yoga for me. Just you, quiet, and your breath. Everything else that doesn't matter just falls away. So I have to ask myself, why don't I get in nature or do yoga more??