I went to the woods to live deliberately, no wait, Thoreau wrote that. And besides I wasn’t going there to live, just to walk around, yet that was deliberate!  If not for my being deliberate I would surely not have wound up in the woods at all. If it was not for my being deliberate I would no doubt be sitting at home in a stupor, which would no doubt be deliberate, as it often is. That is, when I’m in a stupor it is usually by choice. I guess all action and inaction are a matter of choice as well.

So to say, I went to the woods to live deliberately might seem redundant, though it is not. Am I making myself clear? No? Good. Clarity is certainly deliberate and that is what my friend and yours, Henry David, was trying to say.

So I went to the woods by myself, alone, and realized nobody else was there. My rambling statements are an indication of my wandering mind, though I’m just having a little fun.

If only I could see the sky removed from buildings that stand in the way.

Enough, enough, I will try to calm my thoughts, but the day is too lovely to focus on any one subject. It is like telling the wind to blow more steadily and more confined. This simply can not be.

So I went to the woods for the crackling of melting ice. I went to the woods to see saplings snap off the winter snow and upright themselves again, pointing straight to heaven, towards the blue skin above. But most of all I went to the woods to listen to the soft voices rustling along the forest floor and around the mighty conifers and ferns. These voices speak loudest when sufficient time is given. We speak loudest by the same refrain. When we stop to hear the rush of nature, time slows, not so we can race down the freeway of life to discover how lost and afraid we are but to realize and understand, we are home. To take the deep breath our lungs had been craving. As I said, I went to the woods today, but not for the two-mile loop trail, not for the trail at all. I went to the woods to be, to exist. I went to the woods because freedom there has yet to be toppled. It remains the only place I can simply be myself, the shower works too, but we’re talking about the woods: the precious, the austere, the delightful, and most of all the deep woods, beyond the man made.

There are two sides of life. The first is the man made world: controlled, created and dictated. The second side of life is where the eagle soars with concern for no man or machine. Where am I in the mix, struggling with the man made, while attempting to soar!