Deliberate

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn... I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. " Henry David Thoreau

I was tramping through the Cuyamacas today on an eight mile trek along Cold Water Creek, which surprisingly, in these drought wrenching times, was babbling along for a good distance, breathing in the sweet aura of the Mountain Lilac (Ceanothus) and thinking about Thoreau's line of living deliberately. Now, Cold Water Creek is no Walden Pond, and my intent was simply a day's sojourn and not a two-year's dedication to building a dilapidated lean-to, growing beans and capturing the essence of my existence. But, along the way, on this four-hour hike, hot-wired into this landscape, I finally understood what Thoreau meant by living deliberately. It was so simple, so elegant a notion that it could be easily overlooked in the hurly burly plugged-in life just down the road a piece. Wake up. That's what he meant. Breathe it in:  Every sound, every bird call, the rustle of the bushes, the wind sighing through the pines, the clouds, the tiny blue flowers, the faint hum from the bees, the snap of my lunch apple, glug of my water bottle, the straps of my backpack, the charcoal hollows of burnt out trees, the pink granite boulder faces,  the sheer here and now and this is all there is at this moment. That's what he meant. I am awake and deliberate. As an aside, notice the "liberate" contained in deliberate? I am also, free.