On a recent morning walk, as I took in the sights and smells of the woods, I was reminded of the woods near my home when I was a kid, and how important a role all the woods since then have played in my life.  There's something about the woods, here in California or there and then in New Jersey, that simultaneously settles me down and excites me.  Inspiration in the play of light; reassurance in the vivid complexity of every branch and leaf.  So much has gone before me in the woods.  All of life.  Centuries.  Millennia.  And walking through that now taunts me with the mystery of my connection to it.  An unspoken meaning surely treads beside me, beyond my ability to fully comprehend or express it.  Which is the draw to the woods, still, and its power.  The joy is experience, not explanation, in that silent search.