
10.15.12
Slipping the pack off my back, I sit to rest my stooping shoulders. The hike has been harder the past weeks, more uphill, more impassable places requiring alternate routes of unpleasantries. Looking for the welcomed relief of setting the pack down, I discover the stoop impressed on my shoulders remains, a heaviness that wasn't my pack at all. I sit exhausted. wearied. numb. Willing my shoulders to straighten, my spirit to revive.
Too weary to get up, too thirsty not to, I stumble my way to the water hole, longing to quench an enormous thirst. Face down, water slipping its way down deep, something lands on my cheek. A breeze arrives with a whisper for my heart. Slowing to listen. You are my witness. I am God. Stopping to breathe. The quenching has come.
With a heart at rest, my body relaxes, my mind shuts down. All the stammerings, shortcomings, and sadnesses seep into the earth as each muscle gives up the fight and every tension releases. Rhythmic breathing sings the nighttime lullaby as the morning light prepares for new mercies to awaken.

{Notice: all photos in this post taken by the lovely Charley Woodman--pictured here in a photo taken by Chelsea Starr}