Wander, Wonder, Venture

Last week Bernie and I spent in Maine in and around Acadia National Park. A brief intro at the visitor center said the Park was for wanderers and wonderers. 

To prove this I took a solitary hike up Messena Mountain--not quite as challenging as earlier Sierra forays, but challenging enough.  I took a trail aptly named "Perpendicular" to look out over Long Pond and eventually Bass Harbor and the Atlantic beyond. 

 

A misty Maine Day, I saw no one else during my hike though footprints told me that human and nonhuman animals were there. The trail led to other trails and even wilderness where I could forge my own way.

As I climbed, gratitude filled me for my nation and those before me who worked hard and long to set the stone steps to lift me, only me, to the summit. I felt wealthier than Rockefeller and Romney who have lots of money, but not the real wealth that I was experiencing. I was grateful to Teddy Roosevelt and our nation who set the land aside and maintains it for me. I pitied libertarians whose sense of liberty from universal responsibility through government opposes the freedom I knew as I hiked to my spot of contemplation on our common property.

The way of wandering, wondering, and venturing over old and new paths, I realized, is the way to fulfillment and happiness and all should be afforded the opportunity to follow or create their ways, not just those with family pedigree, money, or genes that make for blanch skin, male hormones, and strong bodies and brains.

Never less alone than when alone. My sense of relationship to all past and yet to come right now was complete. And I renewed my commitment to our common project and prospect: wander through the past, wonder at the present, venture for the future