Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

by Annie Dillard

Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home.

Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.

The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.