“The retreat brings people together, builds community in the forest, gets participants outside and off their screens, and uses nature sustainably to heal and inspire minds and souls,” stated Great Mountain Forest Executive Director Michael Zafros. Retreat registration closes on July 30.
We haven’t been in the woods for many days, Lily and I. I soon saw the wisdom of that absence in the downed limbs and needled branches littering the fresh snow.
At that moment, as in a trite story where too many coincidences make a story a fairy tale, three deer crunched up in a copse some 30 yards away, heads high and alert, nervous tails quickly twitching.
So Lily and I left the tree and went to my favorite spot, a rock beside Yokum Brook where the water tumbles beneath my feet, and I reflect on the various complexities of life.
Once home, chagrinned, I glanced at my insect-shield clothing lying unworn in its basket and my bug spray unsprayed on the mudroom windowsill. I had been tromping full-tilt through a New England forest in the height of tick season with no protection whatsoever.
