Today, I went for a long ride off the beaten track. Hours riding up and down twisting, hard stone-packed roads with washed-out parts, over-taken by raging streams. Green, verdure, god’s country, a garden of Eden. Very well-kept coffee fincas stretching as far as your eye can see. N. Nicaragua. Every now and then a little collection of houses, where the coffee workers live their humble, meager existence.
First, be a good animal.
I’ve been returning to nature more and more in the last years I’ve lived. Moving away from the follies and ruinous actions of warring, violent, “civilized” man. My last collection, book (50 Poems From The Mountain) - an attempt to put myself in nature, turn off my machine, my consciousness and simply BE. Our mental awareness, a labyrinth for which there is no exit.
I’m reminded this morning, as I write this, of Tu Fu, he writes;
“The whole country devastated.
Only the mountains and rivers remain.
In spring time, at the ruined castle,
the grass is always green.”
I got home and visited my dog’s grave, behind the house. Already, nature is working its cure, the grass pushing against our vain wish for permanence. Everyone should have to dig a grave.
Get out of the house. All I can say. Nothing more needed than that. Get out of the house, get lost, go where there are few others, few people. Nature will do the rest for you, with her silent breath and kiss and embrace.
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. Lao Tze.