I never can lose my awe at the unparallelled beauty of the natural world that is unspoiled by people. Each season has its glory. Wind and rain I number among my trusted friends. My mind is calmer near trees, flowers, the grass, and the soil. My nerves relax listening to the aria of the birds and the whispering leaves.

I am richly blessed, for I still see images in clouds. The richness of the world lies in our perception. Some days it is good just to be. Beneath all the froth and sputtering there dwells the quiet. We come and look again at those things that are natural and grow out of the earth, and somehow our mind is eased.

There is an aura which emits from a person. In our mind we have a vague picture, and a vague feeling about a person quite apart from any physical distinctions which make up that person. If we like them the thought is pleasant as we bring them to mind, and the picture of them is bright and sometimes colorful, while the feeling about them is warm and happy.

Those people who are difficult to like form dark and tumultuous pictures in our mind, while our feelings about them are cold, and it is painful to think of them. In our recollections of people we remember the little things. Forgotten are most of what they said, though we might remember the way they tilted their head. We might remember the manner in which they smiled, or how they squinted their eyes when they went to speak. Possibly we recall how they laughed, or how they held their hands.

Somehow the words get lost, though at the time they might have seemed important. Afterwards, years afterward, all we remember is their smile, and whether they seemed to like us or not. We remember whether they seemed happy or sad. We remember them as a whole, and not from any one day, happening, or feature, but as one complete, unchanging memory.

The woods are not lonely as one might suppose, but has many inhabitants who live and die there. I step into the forest and at first I see very few creatures, but I wait awhile and soon they begin to reveal themselves. I see a rabbit tiptoe down the path on cotton soled feet, and then a squirrel scampers down the trunk of a tree making a scraping sound on the bark as he comes.

Then all of a sudden a chipmonk shuffles through the leaves only a few feet away, and that very instant I spot a hawk circling above the treetops creeing at the top of his lungs. Then a quail with her little chicks comes darting by hiding in the leaves. My need for companionship is gratified by those gentle folk who quietly eye me, but go on about their business. In their way they seem to say that they trust me.

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