I wrote this in my personal journal on Valentine's Day, 2014:

". . . since reading Wild I've been thinking of my whole life as a journey, and everything in it as a step along the trail. At the end, Strayed said "Thank you" (to God? to the universe? impossible to tell) for her journey and when I sat down to meditate yesterday that's what rose to the surface in me, just not for a hike but for everything on my 61½-year journey.


In my meditation, I felt gratitude for all the through-hikers and day-hikers I met along the way, for the scenery and the animals. Mr. Simply and I have shared the trail for over 40 years now -- 2/3rds of our lives. We've got through it by putting one foot in front of the other, no matter how much our feet hurt, or how steep and rocky or icy or muddy the trail, or how rotten the weather and there's been some damn fine moments along the way that made it worth every blister."

Simply,

Love

I'm doing a meditation on experiencing the world accepting me just as I am and having trouble understanding even what that means, never mind experiencing it. But there was a strip in the comics today, in Mutts, about exactly that. And I thought this evening as the glow intensified and those fat yellow blooms bobbed in the fading light that yes, they are saying to me, We love you darling. They were a gift of love from my grandmother when she dug them, shook off the soil, and packed them and sent them from the Sedgefield post office all those years ago. It was an act of love when Mr. Simply and I bought this house together and I sat in the dirt and sweated and dug and planted them for us, for our future. And they were a gift of love from the universe, from the soil and the rains and the sun, when they came up and bloomed the following spring--as they have done every spring since for about 30 years. Every year, a drift of I love you, Darlings under the pine trees, waiting for me by the curb when I come home in the evening; saying Good morning, Darling, we love you from outside my window when I open the curtains every day.

I think I get it now.

Simply,