Early Morning in Key West

It is early morning in Key West. This is my time for meditation and quiet contemplation. For a variety of reasons, I am inside with the windows shut and the air conditioning running.

The area around me is well-decorated and physically very comfortable. But it feels sterile and artificial in contrast to my sunrise mornings on the porch at home. Tomorrow I must make sure to get outside so I can feel the sun rise and listen to the waking sounds of the morning. Including, of course, the raucous crowing of the local Key West roosters.

It is sad that there are people who rarely or never connect with the outside, not even the little microcosm of a natural world that can be found just outside their doorway. Whether their retreat from the outside is by choice or by conditions imposed on them, this sterile indoor environment where everything is controlled is what is natural to them.

I wonder if we have a need to control and manage everything around us. Is that what drives us to destroy so much of the natural world, the world that God created, so that we can build manmade habitats that we think are more suitable? Habitats like the sterile indoor one I am currently sitting in.

Even our "natural" areas are often carefully groomed , fogged, trailed and made as comfortable for us as possible. I am like everyone else. I like trails. I like grass that is easy to walk on. I appreciate a bench under a shady tree or the comfort of a level place in the park where I can spread my blanket and lie in the sun.

But I also cherish the beauty and joy found in the rare – increasingly rare – wild places that have escaped being touched by us. The places that are growing the way they choose to grow rather than the way we planted or placed them. Parfrey’s Glen in Wisconsin is one of those places.

In spite of the boardwalk and the trail along the stream, Parfrey's Glen has a presence that is created by itself - an aliveness, an energy, a sense of consciousness that grows out of the existence of the glen. It is a presence that can’t be traced to the plants, or to the stream, or to the rock walls. It is all of them and more. It is the fabric that holds them all together. You can feel it in your being. You feel it and you know that you are in the presence of something more majestic, more magical, more mystical than anything you could ever have imagined.

You feel it when you take a deep breath in and you realize that it is inside of you as well. You feel it when you listen to your heartbeat and you realize that it is resonating with the essence of that same presence. You feel it when you quiet your mind and sense that energy, that presence flowing through you. You recognize, for a moment, that what you feel is you, is everything.

We need places like Parfrey's Glen.