On my walk this morning I thought about a line I had read recently, ‘As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.’ Stephen Graham, The Gentle Art. (I pulled the book out to get it exactly right. My memory isn’t THAT good.)

The author directed the reader to map a list and a map of his[sic] wild places. Some of the places I’ve found a door include: the Ely woods behind where we lived when I was about 13 — my first (and favorite) place to escape; the road out of Kaiserslautern, B37, where I touched a man’s hand that sparked back to mine; the wooded stretch along the White River and Allisonville Road, which held the door to forgiveness; the ancient tree in the graveyard in Knightstown, the tree in Madison that talked to me; and many more. I’m sure I’ll have to come back to this and add ones I remember later.

These are all places, marked by me as a moment when I saw a door and went through it and changed. My holy places are such only because of the significance I give them. Seeing these doors requires an awareness (the potential) to accept whatever the moment may bring. These moments always bring something beyond what I could have imagined including their own fractal qualities: each door will open to others.

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