The Peace of Wild Things

One of the most appealing and healing aspects of my new home is that it is semi-rural. I now live in a low-to-middle class, predominantly African-American community; believe me, that is a treat in and of itself. Seriously. Better yet, I live in a rural county. My condo is bordered on three sides by cornfields. The area is ribboned with forested streams. The roads are mostly empty...beckoning. The air smells of earth.

If one is to reconstruct a life from the rubble up, this is a good place to start.

Each day brings unexpected joys from encounters with wild things. Do we not all react with an inner glee and touch of awe whenever we “brush against Nature”? I certainly do. I sit on the patio at dusk and watch a raccoon family amble by. I am filled with grudging admiration for these masked night pirates. The killdeer cry in the darkening sky. A gray heron wings its way majestically toward the far horizon. In these last two weeks, I’ve encountered a coyote, a red-tailed hawk (soaring majestically over its domain), a fox and more whitetail deer than I can count...some posing in “National Geographic-worthy” scenes that momentarily take my breath away.

I had forgotten how much I had loved living here, decades ago. It’s all coming back to me in a rush...

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The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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