From Wordsworth, “Resolution and Independence”:
II
All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning’s birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops;–on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.
V
I heard the sky-lark warbling in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare:
Even such a happy Child of earth am I;
Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;
Far from the world I walk, and from all care;
But there may come another day to me–
Solitude, pain of heart, distress and poverty.
I’m reading some selected poems of Wordsworth (purchased for 25 cents at the book sale at Wrightwood Library!). I haven’t thought about Wordsworth since my mandatory English Literature survey course at college. I was surprised to find that so many of his lines resonated with my middle aged, long distance hiking self. Every morning on the trail I’ve become awake as that ‘happy Child of earth’. Every morning waking up on the hard ground to outrageous beauty. How can we hold all this? There’s nothing to be but grateful.
“But there may come another day to me…”. Can I be so petty and self centered as to apply this to my hurt knee, the possibility of curtailing our hike, and, to the somewhat larger, universal concerns of thunderstorms and forest fires up the trail? Poverty? The people in my hometown who are unhoused and suffering? The friends and young people on the trail who have their own struggles? The frightening record-breaking summer temperatures and drought as we near the ‘no turning back’ range of climate change?
“All the things that love the sun are out of doors”…such an opening of the heart has transpired for me on this everyday, ‘everyman’ PCT journey. It’s nothing unusual–thousands of people are on this trail–yet, it is also everything.
“Such a happy Child of earth am I”…again, all I can be is thankful. Thank you.
Three and Some Trees 