Being in Nature

"Once, years ago I emerged from the woods in the early morning at the end of a walk and - it was the most casual of moments - as I stepped from under the trees into the mild, pouring-down sunlight I experienced a sudden impact, a seizure of happiness. It was no the drowning sort of happiness, rather the floating sort. I made no struggle toward it ; it was given. Time seemed to vanish. Urgency vanished. Any important difference between myself and all other things vanished. I knew that I belonged to the world, and felt comfortably my own containment in the totality. I did not feel that I understood any mystery, not at all; rather that I could feel happy and feel blessed within the perplexity - the summer morning, its gentleness, the sense of the great work being done though the grass where stood scarcely trembled."

Mary Oliver (Long Life)