Retreat

I went on a retreat. It was a glorious three days to say the least. I was fortunate to be able to do many things: I participated in religious ceremonies. I prayed for my sick friend. I finished a novel I was reading. I stood on a road in the middle of a forest at night and listened to the call of an owl up on a nearby ridge. I drank coffee before dawn and listened to the sounds of several owls calling from different directions in the dark. I heard woodpeckers in the trees on a hike and again through the door while half dozing in my room on a sunny morning. Sometimes two or three could be heard to be drilling at the same time. I lay on the ground at night and looked up at a sky filled with stars. I saw Cassiopeia, Orion, Ursa Major, and the Pleiades. I saw a reddish planet in the eastern sky before dawn. (Was it Mars?) I walked along a river in which water rushed around enormous boulders. I saw a frozen waterfall hung in suspended animation over a green, rock-enclosed pool of river water. I stood at the summit of a mountain and, looking past and over a huge pillar of rock, saw mountains, one after another, receding to the horizon, poking up through a sea of cloud lit up white by the morning sun. I ate three meals a day of food prepared from scratch with nothing artificial in it. I stood at the base of a 1200 year old pine tree and looked up through its upper branches at the blue sky. 

I am happy and my heart feels full.