We may have heard that command before, directed at us, but it’s been on our own volition that we’ve taken to the pathways in these few days since Daylight Savings time arrived. It’s kind of silly, since the number of hours of daylight hasn’t changed, but somehow it just seems so much longer, staying light as it does well past 6 p.m.
It helps us remember one of the reasons we so love Sonoma Valley, namely, its beauty. There’s just something moving about being in nature that moves us. It’s too easy to get caught up in the hustle of our daily lives, living out routines that don’t encourage much thinking about our place in the grand scheme.
When we’re outdoors, when the morning Sun brings a glow to the lush yellow-green hillsides or the afternoon light turns the treetops a golden orange, when we fill our lungs with air whose very taste is of fresh growth and budding trees – at such times, our worries are more distant. Being outdoors helps put in perspective the relative UNimportance of those things that otherwise seem to consume our lives.
Perhaps it’s principally in contrast to our indoor lives that we love the outdoors so. What about the people whose lives are principally outdoors? Do they too feel “it”? We realize it’s hardly a scientific study, but as we think back to the people we’ve known who live such lives – farmers, geologists, animal trainers, hiking enthusiasts – they all seem to have been calm people. They’re patient, willing to listen, not easily riled up. There’s a peace in them, somehow, that’s attractive.
So apparently, nature is so compelling that it doesn’t get stale from full-time exposure. People who live their lives in nature seem to have learned to live life at its own pace. It’s a bit sad to realize that we’ve experienced that only for short periods, when we glimpsed the satisfaction of following the rhythms set by the cycles of nature over days and months and seasons..
Woods’ Return
The shafts are no longer wood. Some exotic alloy is used instead, bringing high-tech into the outdoor sport of golf. But Woods, the man with the given name of an animal, is important to that game, and it is obviously important to him.
We’re glad to see his return, sensing that he, too, needs the outdoors to find peace. Yes, his life has been off course, literally, and we hope that his return to a professional life outdoors helps him find balance – helps him find humility, as odd as that sounds for someone of his singular achievements. Nature is bigger that any of us. “At the end of the day,” as the expression goes – at the end of our lives, to put it more accurately – it isn’t what we do that matters or what we accumulate. It’s how we live. It’s how we treat others, and ourselves, and nature. That’s what matters.
We hope for Woods what we hope for everyone: an abiding peace. In our view, that’s the real goal in life.
