This photo was taken during my walk this morning. It is the point where I reach the uppermost peak of the hill where I turn to begin the journey home.
The valley is so hauntingly beautiful this time of the year. The quiet and solitude of my daily “mountaintop experience” fuels my soul. In that moment, I feel no obligation to do, say, or be anything or anyone. I savor the moment and delight in the fact that it is what it is… a gift! As the earth prepares for her impending slumber, I feel awakened, alive, and new again.
“For now she need not think about anybody.
She could be herself, by herself.
And that was what now she often felt the need of– to think;
well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone.
All the being and the doing, expansive glittering, vocal, evaporated;
and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself; a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others…
Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience, but as a wedge of darkness.
Losing personality, losing the fret, the hurry, the stir; and there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity.”
“To the Lighthouse”
by Virginia Woolf