~bartender, a honey whiskey please, neat.
I sit, on a rock, near a stream.
This stream is a familiar stream, but one that I arrive at in a different way every time.
The winding paths in the forest, shifting, changing, playing tricks.
Right now the foliage is lush, green, overgrown, teeming with life.
Other times it is wilting, in a last flame, of mellow brown and fiery orange.
Then comes a time of retreat, a great quiet, a blanket of white and the barren trees making a seemingly infinite snowscape.
And then, with each rainfall and each sunny day, flowers come, then retreat, and new life grows, grows, grows, and overgrows.
Paths being reclaimed with tangles of brush and fallen trees.
New paths springing forth, as the torrential downpours carve their way across the land.
The forest is never the same, always, shifting and changing.
What never changes is the joy I feel while roaming around it, disappearing into my little pocket of quiet just a stone’s throw away from life’s ongoing shuffle. The feeling of peace as stories of fantasy and faraway lands mix with the dribble of the streams, the chirping of the birds, or the muted rustles. The feeling of emerging reborn, my tank refilled, my soul renewed.