The natural world’s perfect indifference has always been the best cure for my own anxieties. Every living thing—every bird and mammal and reptile and amphibian, every tree and shrub and flower and moss—is pursuing its own vital purpose, a purpose that sets my human concerns in a larger context. The dramas and worries and pain that are the warp of my life, woven tightly through the light and love and joy that are its weft, don’t register on the blue jay at all. The earthworms beneath the soil haven’t the least idea of the frets that pluck at my heart. In their rest, I find rest.
