“ “If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.” Mary Oliver”

Looking down on our home from the hillside.

Growing up on a Wyoming ranch, my brothers and sister and I played in the woods below our house. We were pioneers, and the rotting logs we hung from the trees our bear-kill. We lost ourselves for endless hours.

We rode horses to a high point on the ranch—a rock formation we called Setting Hen. Sometimes as we climbed the hills through the towering ponderosa pines on snowy trails, the yellow and purple crocuses peeked up through the snow to give us a glimpse of the season to come. Through the evergreens on that hillside, we could grab glances of our home below.

We would gallop in the wide-open spaces leading up to Setting Hen. Once there, we tied the reins of our horses to nearby evergreens and scrambled up red rocks to the highest point. We'd settle down on the flat, smooth places between cracks and crevices and try to take-in the view of Devil's Tower and the Missouri Buttes standing before us. The stiff winds would sing through the trees, blowing my straw-colored hair wild and free.

Often I would go there by myself to try to soak in the rugged land stretched out before me. Perched on Setting Hen, I faced my "alone thoughts."

When I turned twelve, our family moved to a ranch in the Ozarks. I wandered the woods in a ravine below our house and would often rest awhile near a stream running through it. I sometimes spotted shy deer hiding on the hillside, or discovered fossils laid bare by the bubbling creek. In those woods, I knew respite from a noisy household with four brothers and one sister,

Once while visiting my grandmother, we dug through boxes of old family photos and letters. I found journal pages, her daughter, my Aunt Mary, wrote aa a young girl. The pages revealed her "alone thoughts"—the ones she had riding her horse in the wide-open of Wyoming. Like me, she thought about God when she rode the fields and forests of her family's ranch.

I met my "alone thoughts' in the woods. I would say I "found myself" in the woods. Staring up at the trees, trees reaching up to the sky overhead, I thought about God. There in the woods, I came to believe in a creator—I knew he existed. I heard his voice in the quiet. The beauty around me stirred my soul and awakened me to his majesty and power. The silence and space I experienced in the woods unearthed unexplored territory in my heart, and I discovered what I valued and why. I found inner-strength to resist going along with the crowd. I found my best me.

I learned there in the woods to notice and appreciate life, the stuff that made life worth living. I saw vibrant green leaves waving gently in the breeze and heard birds of varied kinds, each contributing their sweet song. I noticed delicate flowers reaching heaven-ward and took in sunset skies splashed peach and pink. There in the woods below my house, I stared up at the star-studded sky spread out overhead and felt the breath of my horse as he nuzzled my neck.

I took my oldest grandson to the Ozarks last summer. We visited my family, who lives on the same ranch I did. I saw him go to the woods. I saw him as the horses nuzzled his neck. I saw him soaking it all in. On a lovely June evening, when a rich-colored rainbow bowed low over the green fields, and cows grazed in the golden hour, he wandered off and stood on the edge of the woods, looking and thinking. And I imagined he met some of his "alone thoughts."

When I go to the woods, it is all color and light, and I'm always returning there to slow down, breathe deeply, and be renewed. My times in the woods birthed my love of beauty--of nature and the animals living there. Sometimes when I feel I can't find the best me, I go to the woods to find myself again. I almost always go there alone, but if I take you with me, I must love you very much.