Awaking in the wild
Modern life is so busy, so noisy, so full...From time to time, I escape into the wilderness and spend a few nights in a tent. Awaking in the early morning is one of my pleasures. This is a humble attempt to describe it:
Your crawl out of your man-made cocoon into a world bathed in a weak twilight. The trees, standing erect against the presumed sky, are motionless reminders of your own insignificance. Everything is quiet and, high above the treetops, dawn struggles to tear the last remaining signs of night.
You strike a match and throw it onto a pile of twigs. The fire radiates faint rays of warmth through your shivering body. Its crackling, weak at first but growing stronger as it consumes the broken tree limbs you found on the ground, is the only sound disturbing the peaceful reign of serenity.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the sun stretches its fingers across the milky sky, mercilessly shredding whatever small remains of the night are left.
All at once, the world awakes. The crackling of the fire drowns in a chorus of birds as forest creatures crawl out of their dens and into the open.
The first ray of the sun makes its way though the low hanging branches and lands on your face. At your feet, the fire crackles, and you no longer feel like a lone island in the sea of souls; you feel like you finally belong.
You sense that this is the right place after all, that your own miserable soul is not forlorn, but is still, somehow, tied to the countless souls and spirits that dwell in the rocks, mountains, and creatures who hide from your eyes when you are fully awake.
At this point, everything you thought of as wrong becomes right, and you discern that, despite what you were told, you are a part of this world.