Willamette Valley, Oregon – 2018
Some places have a way of inviting us into stillness.

There was a day when I entered the Willamette forest in Oregon beside a waterfall I had visited many times before. The path was familiar. I knew each bend in the trail, the great cedars that lined the river, and the place where the falls first revealed themselves through the trees. Yet something felt profoundly different. It was not the forest that had changed, but my relationship with it.

I found a quiet place beside the river and simply sat. There was nowhere else I needed to be, nothing to accomplish, nothing to understand. I allowed myself to become completely present.

Most of us spend our lives believing we are our thoughts and emotions. We become caught in worry, fear, anger, or grief, forgetting that something much deeper quietly holds every experience.

Awareness is that deeper presence. It exists before thought, before emotion, before the stories we tell ourselves. Thoughts arise within awareness. Emotions move through awareness. Even our sense of identity appears within this vast field of knowing.

There are many things I love on this earth, but one of my favorites is the sweat lodge. I chose this image from my home in Colorado because it captures the stillness that often settles over a covered lodge on a snowy winter day, just before the hot rocks are brought in, the Grandfathers.

When you are in a sweat lodge in the snow, there is a quiet magic to the sacred space. The birds have fallen silent. The crickets are gone. Even the distant sounds of passing cars seem to disappear. The crisp winter air awakens your senses while the glowing stones draw you into the warm, moist womb of the lodge.

There is a reason so many people are drawn to the ocean. Something within us recognizes its vastness.

We stand upon the shore and watch the waves arrive one after another. Some are gentle. Some are powerful. Some barely reach the sand before returning to the sea. The surface is always changing, yet the ocean remains. Many of us live as though we are the waves.

Many of us spend our lives moving from one thing to the next. One task. One conversation. One responsibility. One goal. We become so accustomed to movement that we rarely notice the spaces in between.

Yet life does not only unfold within activity.