Thank You

“Strawberries first shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet. A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it. And yet is appears. Your only role is to be open-eyed and present. Gifts exist in a realm of humility and mystery–as with random acts of kindness, we do not know their source.“
— Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer

The sense of an ending is in the air—does autumn ever smell like anything different?—and I’ve been reflecting on these past two years and what they’ve given me. It’s easy to be cynical: I’ve made little money, my retirement accounts have flat-lined, I’ve eaten more vegetarian meatballs than healthy for any single person.

But here I am. Still.

This summer I posted my address on social media and invited people to write to me. Send letters, I said. Send pictures, send anything. It was both selfish and altruistic. I’m a glutton for letters, for paper scratched up with ink, but I also believe that sitting down and writing forces you to be alone and connect with yourself in ways we rarely do these days. There is no delete button. You will not know the person’s reaction for weeks to come. You are sending a token of love out into the hostile world and hoping someone cherishes it, appreciates it, sees the vulnerability revealed in that scrap of paper and loves you more for it.

People wrote me. They sent handwritten letters and cards. They sent poems and artwork and stickers from their local gear shop. And it was incredible. All of it. The words. The tokens of thoughtfulness. The fact that people had taken the time to write and postage and mail a letter when a lot of us cannot even be bothered to unload a dishwasher.

Those letters were a gift. Every time I found one resting in my hike center mailbox tears sprang to my eyes.

And it was interesting that nearly every person who wrote mentioned my blog. This little ole thing.

I never thought of it like this, but perhaps my blog is a gift to the world, a sliver of artistic musings I share with the universe, hoping they inspire and entertain and enthrall. And those letters were a gift to me, small offerings saying, I see you, I’m thinking of you.

The world’s a beautiful place, isn’t it?

Gift culture is often thought of as commodity culture, but they’re not the same thing. Not if you see a tufting cattail and smile. Not if you pass along an article to a friend saying, thought of you. Not if you perceive the small treasures the earth offers up to you, the trembling, tentative threads of human connection pushing toward you, as gifts. It’s all there. We already have it all.

The last time I visited Rochester my mother cleaned my car. My dad installed a new rear windshield wiper.

gifts. all gifts.

A summer camp counselor I trained for hikes ran up to me, hugged me, when I returned from a two-week paddling trip this summer. We didn’t even know each others last names.

what a gift.

I led a hike with fifth graders the other day, and I told them that the decaying tree stumps reminded me of abandoned cities, and for the rest of the hike they stopped at countless bits of nature and told me what it reminded them of, and I was so grateful that they could still find the magic in the hollows of trees and acorns and spongy moss, and that they shared that magic with me, and that these tiny mundane pieces of nature were really miracles disguised as something ordinary, something effortless, and that everything about nature is an absolute gift.

This is what these past two years have given me. Less money, more gratitude. Less stability, more freedom. Less tangible items, more intangible connections, with myself, with others, with nature.

And what a gift that all is. How priceless. How incomparable.

(Deep thanks to everyone who wrote to me this summer! For the record, you can write me whenever and I will always respond. Address is still currently 1872 Pilot Knob Road, Kattskill Bay, NY 12844, but it’ll change in the next couple of months.)