At Peace, Balanced, and Ready as All Hell to Tackle What Comes Next

I'm back from the wilderness.  I'll post photos and maybe some thoughts later, but for now, here are three quotes that do a pretty damn good job of expressing how I feel right now.

Why don't you stay in the wilderness?  Because that isn't where it is at; it's back in the city, back in downtown St. Louis, back in Los Angeles.  The final test is whether your experience of the sacred in nature enables you to cope more effectively with the problems of people.  If it does not enable you to cope more effectively with the problems - and sometimes it doesn't, it sometimes sucks you right out into the wilderness and you stay there the rest of your Life - then when that happens, by my scale of value; it's failed.  You go to nature for an experience of the sacred...to re-establish your contact with the core of things, where it's really at, in order to enable you to come back to the world of people and operate more effectively.  Seek ye first the kingdom of nature, that the kingdom of people might be realized.  

- Willi Unsoeld.  Outward Bound instructor, and the man who "held the rope" while the first American summited Mt. Everest

One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am-a reluctant enthusiast... a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards. 

- Edward Abbey 

I have come to the frightening conclusion
that I am the decisive element.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
It is my daily mood that makes the weather.
I possess tremendous power to make a life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.
I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations, it is my response that decides
whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated
and a person humanized or dehumanized.
If we treat people as they are, we make them worse.
If we treat people as they ought to be,
we help them become what they are capable of becoming.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

And for good measure, let's throw in some of my boy Josh Ritter's rhythm and lyrics.  Ritter is from small-town Idaho who really captures the West, expansiveness, and optimism.