Essential Self
You find peace not by rearranging
the circumstances of your life, but
by realizing who you are at the
deepest level.
—Thomas Merton
I drove up to Lake Geneva for a few days, needing the
silence and the sounds and smells of the lake to get some
writing done. I slept the way you sleep only at camp, hard
and deep, never moving an inch. And I started the day
talking to my boys—Mac’s sweet voice on the phone
sounding a million miles away instead of an hour.
I drove into town for coffee and a croissant, and now
I’m back to camp, in an Adirondack chair overlooking the
peninsula. A group is gathered at the fire pit down the hill; I
can’t make out the words, but I hear the lilts and rises of a
woman’s voice from time to time. The clouds are low but
not dark, and the green is impossibly vivid, everywhere you
look.