Yesterday we went hiking at the arboretum for the first time. We’ve in the area for the past year and a half, and only just got a membership last month. I’d been to the children’s area a few times, which is amazing in and of itself, but yesterday was the first time we’d gone out into the woods and hiked. Wow, was it beautiful. It was a breezy 69 degree day (my fave!) and it was just perfect.
I’m big on trees. Big. Love and need the green. And Havarti’s parents’ house has a lot of greenery, so I thought we had enough nature to satisfy us completely. But being out there in the forest with nothing else around made me realize that we really don’t. There’s something different about being away from houses and cars and buildings and landscaping. The word “spiritual” comes to mind. We talk in Brilliant Star about how nature can help us connect to God, and I know that on many levels. But it has been a while since we’d actually been in NATURE nature. We’ve become full-on city folk. We spend probably ten times more hours on the expressway than we do out in nature. Yikes.
The forest we walked through has been there since the first European settlers came to this area, and undoubtedly much longer than that. We’d walked through forest preserves here in Illinois, but the arboretum is so big that you can actually get far enough into the forest that you don’t hear the traffic. It’s like you’ve driven way into the mountains or something. I found myself just wanting to walk, look, and breathe. So unhectic. So peaceful.
So glad we bought that membership.
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