Going out to the woods is like an oil change for my heart. Every time I go, I feel like the space has gifts for me if I'm willing to be alone, be open, and listen. What came home to me this trip was this sense of unlimited potential. Scale. Perspective. This world has capacity for such incredible optimism and wonder. In the old dead trees, baby buzzards are sleeping in eggs under their parents. Spring ephemeral flowers are poking up along the roadsides, doing the good, hard work of waking up the pollinators. They get up in the dark every year absolutely unnoticed, bloom and vanish, but without them, the insects who keep the world fruiting would have nothing to eat.

What is the sum of all my great dramatic disappointments compared to that kind of relentless generosity?