Spring slowly creeps toward summer here. The peak of day left me too warm for comfort, but the evening cools and brings an invigorating breeze as the sun slips to the West. I am walking down a main street, listening to the calls of birds and bugs and sidestepping the clouds of anopheles mosquitoes that dance exuberant, freshly molted and ready to begin the season. The city's greenery has come alive--the blossoms are fading out in many places, replaced with young shoots and tender new leaves. It puts me in mind of wild places, and I slip into the quiet state of simple-mind that comes over me when visiting the forest. Thought fades and pure sense rules me, the cars and people vanish into a perceptual haze, and I smile quietly as I look into the sunset and spot the tops of the Olympic Mountains rising above the nearby buildings, distant silhuoettes in the sunset.

It puts me in mind of camping, and dayhikes, and swimming. A dozen things I've not done properly since I moved here to Seattle. In summers past, the covenfolk in Portland would hold a summer solstice campout. No longer affiliating myself with nature-based religion (or indeed, much of any at all), I nevertheless recall the small joys of those trips--becoming subtly more alert and attentive as my perception grows accustomed to the sounds and smells and sights of woodland, the sharing and primitive-esque social organization for day-to-day concerns, the rush of energy as I become active and move and take advantage of the sheer space available.

As the sun finally disappears over the horizon, I reach my destination: a small tea shop. The atmosphere here is cool and meditative, and the concerns of the day (and in my life of late) are softly pushed aside by peppered pink chai. My mind goes quiet as I finish tapping out this reflection, and is still.