There are many people in any community who have a profound affinity for nature, for whom there is an urgently pressing need to get out into a forested environment, to ease their sense of time and place into the realization that peace can be found if one only seeks it out. Somehow, cares and concerns seem to evaporate as a sense of ease nestles over one's consciousness in a natural setting. They may return when the sense of immediate reality returns as we exit those natural realms, but they assume a much lesser presence in our minds.

We gain a kind of comfort and confidence that we have allotted too much weight to things that are troubling but transitory in our lives, manageable with a little effort and distance, once we have the opportunity to rest our minds, taking them away from those immediate concerns. Needless to say this works for some all-consuming concerns, not all, but even those that impinge so heavily upon us that they cannot be dislodged even for a second, tend to assume a more well-rounded proportional weight leaving us with the impression that we can deal with them, and we do.

That's the sober side of life, alleviated as though magically by contact with the calming effect of a natural landscape. For the most part we venture toward those landscapes for the same balming effort, simply as an important part of our everyday lives, if we're fortunate enough to be able to. Yesterday, going through the ravine on yet another atmospherically dark and gloomy afternoon we came across an acquaintance with her dog, sighing her loss at being unable to be there for the past week, due to illness, and how relieving it has been for her to be well enough to return.

And as dark and gloomy as the day may be, in the interior of a wooded area there are captivatingly dramatic little scenes here and there. And if, though the sky has been clouded all day, when the sun begins to set and dusk slowly set in, you are there and able to capture the beauty of it all, there's a satisfying glow at being there, just then, witness to a sublime event.