Sense

           The more time I spend staring out the window and across the lawn at the beautiful landscape of the Adirondacks, the more I appreciate all there is to see. Each day a new shade of red appears in the trees as I struggle to identify a tiny yellow butterfly flitting around the clovers in the yard. The light falls on the distant mountains a million different ways throughout each day, and I try my best to take mental pictures of each moment of sun, shade, rain, and clouds.           

            Despite all of the new things to see each day, over the past few weeks, I have become increasing more aware of how much is out there that we can’t see. At night we stargaze. Our purpose isn’t to listen, so I am always startled by each and every animal noise we hear. They range from coyotes making a kill to a tiny owl migrating overhead. Of course the stories associated with these noises are made up, the images fabricated by our imaginations to fit the sound track provided by the darkness we peer eagerly into.  

            Most mornings when I step outside for the first time, I close my eyes and take a deep breath. The air travels, crisp and clean, through my nose and fills my body. I feel the shapes and colors of the mountains without looking. Walking up a mountain on a narrow trail tempts me to scoop up a handful of yellow leaves that have recently fallen to carpet the brown earth. In my hand they are damp and cold from the morning dew. I raise my cupped hands to my face and inhale deeply. I smell childhood, making piles of oak leaves in the backyard with my sister and friends before jumping in. The sweet earthy smell of these ADK leaves reminds me so much of the same smell I found at the bottom of our pile in the suburbs of New Jersey.

             In a place like this, one that is so overwhelmingly beautiful, it takes all of your senses to take advantage of all it has to offer. I believe that in order to really be in a place, you have to feel it. Seeing is not quite enough.