At times we feel the need to go back to plain things. To stones, earth, grass, wind. To things we have known a long time, to what we knew when what filled the hours was dirt and a few sticks, a pile of leaves or some thin, white bones from a long-dead bird. The huge rock near the creek was not too hard to lie on then and the sun on bare skin felt warm. We did not feel the press of time as we do now. The world seemed firm and real, and life was slow, and long, and good. —Carolyn Elkins, “What We Knew”
Outdoors.
