the reciprocity of being here

Being in a beautiful place does not mean I feel beautiful. Sometimes the saturated world seems to stop at my flat edges.

I was depressed in Baxter State Park last summer. Depression, I have learned, usually implies I am blocking up an experience rather than letting it flow. Usually this experience is sadness, which I reflexively try to hold back. I block the river and then I suffer in the drought.

On the 13 mile hike I was okay. The required exertion to get over all the peaks and back to our site before nightfall pumped enough vitality through me to outweigh my flapping mental slack. It was the rest days when I found myself acutely numb while sitting on slopes surrounded by water.

On those slopes I was in the company of many embraces. Lichen hugged the smooth curves of dead and living wood, moss cuddled into shallow soil, and dried leaves curled around the miniscule cones of the Red Pines. Constant weather has worn the color palette to gentle gradients. And in this wild context I found myself struggling to accept the faded hues of my own emotional state. I sat worn, and disapproving. I was pressuring myself to take in, gaze in, look at so as to know and feel. In doing so, I position myself unintentionally outside. In separateness, I feel lost.