There's Just Something About A Forest

That gets me a little bit high. It's probably just the extra oxygen but I'd like to think there's more to it. Some intrinsic connection from my soul to the Creator. Every time I step into the forest (or some other grand natural landscape) I feel different, better, cleaner, brighter. Our trip to Bernheim was reparitive for me.

I wish there had been water in this streambed. It was so hot it would have been great to splash around a little.

This fallen tree was really pretty, this picture doesn't really do it justice.  The light beyond the trees in the background was much more visible.

I love the way a trail in the woods looks.  It has so much mystery, potential, history and character.  If this trail had diverged I would have spoken my favorite poem:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Indeed, I just did.  I thank Robert Frost for expressing so eloquently my feelings towards a trail.  I hope this will not be my last trail experience for a while.  I want to hike half the 13-miler this summer/fall.  And one day I hope to brave the Appalachian Trail before too long.  It's extraordinarily long.  Really the whole length of the Appalachian Mountains.  A hike like this requires professional gear, training and a determination I'm not sure I have.  But the wonders it would do for my soul...

I believe God made nature and I believe nature reveals God.