this enormity, this cauldron of changing greens and blues, is the great palace of the earth. everything is in it - monsters, devils, jewels, swimming angels, soft-eyed mammals that unhesitatingly exchange looks whit us as we stand on the shore; also, sunk whit some ship or during off-loading, artifacts of past decades or centuries; also the outpourings of fire under water, the lava trails; and kelp fields, coral shelves, and so many other secrets - the remembered and faithfully repeated recitations of the whales, the language of dolphins - and the multitude itself, the numbers and the kinds of shark, seal, worm, vegetations, and fish: cod, haddock, swordfish, hake, also the lavender sculpin, the chisel-mouth, the goldeye, the puffer, the tripletail, the star-gazing minnow. how can we not know that, already, we live in paradise?

so we become, for the afternoon, sea creatures ourselves. how light ou bodies feel as we lounge against the planks and trail our hands in the water. ahead is the sandy point of our destination, and between us and it not a single apportioning marker but the wide water's drowsy lap and slide, its abundance and gleam. we stroll on its surface freely, citizens of the water world. how different from the foot on the stone, the hand opening the gate, the gravel path of the garden, the trudge through loose sand, the heel sticking into the clay of the field! such weight, on the earth, is on our shoulders: gravity keeping us at home. but on the water we shake off the harness of weight; we glide; we are passengers of a sleek ocean bird with its single white wing filled with wind.

what does it mean, say the words, that the earth is so beautiful? and what shall i do about it? what is the gift that i should bring to the world? what is the life i should live?

the bird in the forest or the fox on the hill has no such opportunity to forgo the important for the trivial. habit, for these, is also the garment they wear, and indeed the very structure of their body life. it’s now or never for all their vitalities — bonding, nest building, raising a family, migrating or putting on the deeper coat of winter — all is done on time and with devoted care, even if events contain also playfulness, grace, and humor, those inseparable spirits of vitality. neither does the tree hold back its leaves but lets them flow open or glide away when the time is right. neither does water make its own decision about freezing or not; that moment rests with the rule of temperatures.

it is the natural world that has always offered the hint of our single and immense divinity—a million unopened fountains. in such a mood then, not of understanding but of knowing i am blessed even as moving from shade to sunlight we feel the engendering heat, i live my life. i walk along every path, or maybe i lie down at the edge of the pond to do a little summing up. once in the early morning, i came upon a tree that was covered as if in limpid leaves, but they weren’t leaves, they were butterflies — monarchs —thousands of them asleep, creating for a night and morning a single tree of orange silks, small patches of orange silks. once i looked across a hillside and saw three deer, lying down, and a flock of geese moving among them, stepping over their legs, casually brushing against their shoulders as they pulled at the pale winter grass. once i saw the freshly built dam of two beaver, a half moon of mud and slender branches, the leaves still fresh upon them; then, as i watched, the water shoved with its silver gloves and it broke, it left the world forever. hurry, hurry, open every door! says my heart. the black ants, running up and down their organized hill, are an opportunity. the soft toad in the hot sand is an opportunity. one hour at the edge of the waving sea is a feast of opportunities. every morning, tumult and quietude marry each other and create light. the sun rises like a rosy plum. birds, floating in the water, turn to watch. sometimes, also, or so it seems, does the wind.

what can we do about God, who makes and then breaks every god-forsaken, beautiful day? what can we do about all those graves in the woods, in old pastures in small towns in the bellies of cities? God’s heavy footsteps through the bracken through the bog through the dark wood his breath like a swollen river his switch, lopping the flowers, forgive me, Lord, how i still, sometimes, crave understanding.

and now: enough of silver, behold the pink, even a vague, unsurpassable flush of pale green. it is the performance of this hour only, the dawning of the day, fresh and ever new. this is to say nothing against afternoons evenings or even midnight. each has its portion of the spectacular. but dawn - dawn is a gift. much is revealed about a person by his or her passion, or indifference, to this opening of the door of day. no one who loves dawn, and is abroad to see it, could be a stranger to me.

when i was a child, living in a small town surrounded by woods and a winding creek - woods more pastoral than truly wild - my great pleasure, and my secret, was to fashion for myself a number of little houses. (...) there was never a closure but always an open doorway, and i would sit just inside, looking out into the world. (...) i was lucky, no one ever found any of my houses, or harmed them. the fell apart of the weather, an event that caused me no grief; i moved on to another place of leaves and earth, and built anew. (...) for me it was important to be alone; solitude was a prerequisite to being openly and joyfully susceptible and responsive to the world of leaves, light, birdsong, flowers, flowing water. [...] and we might, in our lives, have many thresholds, many houses to walk out from and view the stars, or to turn and go back to for warmth and company. but the real one - the actual house not of beams and nails but of existence itself - is all of earth, with no door, no address separate from oceans or stars, or from pleasure or wretchedness either, or hope, or weakness, or greed.

we may be touched by the most powerful of suppositions - even to a certainty - as we stand in the rose petals of the sun and hear a murmur from the wind no louder than the sound it makes as it dozes under the bee's wings. this too, i suggest, is weather, and worthy of report.

of what rich and ornate stuff the powerful and uncontainable gods invented the world, out of the rampant dust! the silky brant, the scarf of chiffon, the letter, the empty envelope, the black ducks, the old shoes, the little white dog fall away, fall away, and all the music of our lives is in them. the gods act as they act for what purpose we do not know, but this we do understand: the world could not be made without the swirl and whirlwind of our deepest attention and our cherishing. and if i mean the god of the sky, i mean also the god of the river—not only the god of the gold-speckled cathedral but the lord of the green field, where people pause casually and snap each other’s picture; where thrushes release their darkling songs; where little dogs bark and leap, their ears tossing, joyously, as they run toward us.

i mean, by such flightiness, something that feels unsatisfied at the center of my life—that makes me shaky, fickle, inquisitive, and hungry. i could call it a longing for home and not be far wrong. or i could call it a longing for whatever supersedes, if it cannot pass through, understanding. other words that come to mind: faith, grace, rest. in my outward appearance and life habits i hardly change. (...) but, at the center: i am shaking; i am flashing like tinsel. restless, i read about ideas. yet i let them remain ideas. i read about the poet who threw his books away, the better to come to a spiritual completion. yet i keep my books. i flutter; i am attentive, maybe i even rise a little, balancing; then i fall back. (...) opulent and ornate world, because at its root, and its axis, and its ocean bed, it swings through the universe quietly and certainly. it is: fun, and familiar, and healthful, and unbelievably refreshing, and lovely. and it is the theater of the spiritual; it is the multiform utterly obedient to a mystery. (...) the idea of love is not love. the idea of ocean is neither salt nor sand; the face of the seal cannot rise from the idea to stare at you, to astound your heart. time must grow thick and merry with incident, before thought can begin.

it is one of the perils of our so-called civilized age that we do not yet acknowledge enough, or cherish enough, this connection between soul and landscape—between our own best possibilities, and the view from our own windows. we need the world as much as it needs us, and we need it in privacy, intimacy, and surety.