Where do you find peace?

  I reckon I've been a bit tense lately, which is understandable...lack of sunlight, being stuck indoors ... and yearly audits are coming up where I work so I've been racing to get everything ready. I don't know why I stress over it. They come and go every year and I always do well, but I worry anyway.
  So, I guess I've been bringing my stress home lately because last Friday my wife pretty much met me at the door ... holding my shotgun. I know I haven't been quite as sweet over the past month but I hardly deserve to be shot over it. Ok, obviously she wasn't planning on shooting me. She just wanted me to relax and go to the woods. I asked if she wanted some squirrels ... or maybe a rabbit. She said she didn't care what I brought home as long as I left my stress in the woods. Darn, I love that woman. She knows I'm happiest in the woods and always have been. I don't think about anything, but I see and hear everything. I'm focused, and clear. I'm content to walk along with my turkey cannon(shotgun) over my shoulder. Every limb on every tree stands out to me, its creeping growth over the years. I can see shapes in the bark. I can walk along and notice a drop of water clinging to the edge of a leaf on the ground ... and a thousand more like it, but completely different. I can pick up a trail as easy as someone would notice a road sign, and with a glance and touch, I know it was a doe with a young one, less than an hour ago. I can bark at squirrels and they answer. I can fashion a crow call from a twig and a piece of grass. I can hoot like an owl and breathe in the scared silence after. When I hear a woodpecker, I can tell you how far he is, and if he pecks on hard wood or soft. I can sit by the edge of a creek, listening to the trickle of water, and wind through the hollow, like one would listen to their favorite song ... over and over again. I can stare into the floodwaters of a cypress grove and watch drops of water fall from the tops, and the tiny ripples they make, with all the enthusiasm of a teenage girl watching "Twilight" for the first time. I can creep up behind an armadillo, poke him in the butt with my boot, watch him jump two feet in the air, and laugh harder than the best comedian could ever make me. I can make a bow drill out of three sticks and a shoe string, and start a fire. I can make a spit out of hickory limbs and roast a rabbit, or a squirrel, a duck, or a fish ... and the finest restaurant in the world wouldn't interest me a bit.
  And that's the beauty of it. I can just be ... me. I don't worry about deadlines or bills. I don't wonder if the day will come when I can't take care of my family. It doesn't bother me that I'm raising my children in a violent world. In these moments, I wish that the peace I feel could spread, and the whole world would just be content to enjoy the simplicity of what they love.

So ... where do you find your peace?


I had tried to post some pictures here. I got a good one yesterday of a ray of light hitting the pond where I was fishing...and one my wife took of me trying to fix my spinner bait..haha...now that's concentration. But...I couldn't figure out how so i just posted them on my blog photos.