Seeking Simplicity, Sanity, and Euphoric Joy

     I cannot pinpoint an exact moment or event that birthed my desire to live a more simple life in the country--it seems to have resided within me from an early age.  My greatest childhood memories were of times I was exploring nature, often on the micro scale of our small suburban backyard, but occasionally on family camping trips to a local lake or long hiking trip through the fields, creeks, and ponds that surrounded our neighborhood when I was young.  I felt the most alive, the most content, and an often almost euphoric joy any time I was out exploring nature on any scale.  I remember as a toddler crawling on my hands and knees for hours on a cool spring morning following busy ants, smelling the cool air and fresh new tufts of grass beginning to grow amoung trails of cool packed earth.

     I've sought to steal as many moments as possible in nature my entire life, and often discover that within minutes of finding a quiet tranquil place to soak in through every sense, I am brought back to that same sustaining euphoric joy and faith in the goodness of God who created all things.  The stresses of life are lessened, optimism is restored, and sometimes what seems like a mysterious and powerful confidence that my fate rests within the hands of a benevolent God comforts my world-wearied soul.  

     Though there is probably very little on which I agree with William Wordsworth, these lines describe well what I feel when I walk in the fields around our rural home:

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.