In Need Of Calm

Time to step back, take a breath, and let some of the adrenaline burn off. Let’s go to a happy place.

Mount Ascutney in Vermont, of course. Maybe a third of the way up the trail from the parking lot to the summit, still on a reasonably flat stretch, there’s a spot where the tree canopy opens up and it’s sunny and the ground is covered in ferns.

I always make a point to stop there for a while. It’s quiet and beautiful and very, very green.

There are insects and bugs flitting about and I could hear birds (cardinals), but other than that it was dead quiet. I was lucky – while I was there, no one else was hiking along the trail to interrupt my reverie.

Behind me to the left the hillside climbs very steeply and there are some “small boulders the size of large boulders,” and through the trees you can see the mountains off in the distance (looking toward New Hampshire and the Connecticut River to the east, I think, maybe?).

Even if we can’t go to the “Ascutney Sea of Ferns” in person tonight, perhaps we can go there in our heads for a while and leave CNN, NYT, WSJ, and Twitter behind. They’ll be there when we come back, but in the meantime, our blood pressure and anxiety levels can drop back down to safe levels.

I’ll see you on the trail!