The Peace of Wild Things

God Bless you, Wendell Berry

"When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

Wendell Berry

"I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods."

 The healing shadow

Photo below: Goodbye, Columbus

Our lakou on Mon Bouton proper looks sad for the most part because it is the end of summer and I am leaving. others, however, are happy to be in a picture! I have used the term "Mon Bouton" to refer loosely and mistakenly to the whole mountain zone. From here, in the U.S., we seem always to be looking to label a "village," or a "center" for these mountains. It has been a struggle to explain that, there "is no there there," indeed. Homes are scattered like confetti, a goodly distance apart, along a scraggly, difficult path that winds and unwinds. occasionally, there is a cluster, a lakou, of closely related or in-marrying folks, such as those on Mon Bouton proper. We look in vain for the equivalent of our "Main Street" - what does that say about us!Imagine, Columbus was looking for India, didn't know what hit him, or what he hit..Good-bye, Columbus!