As fall arrives, and the weather again settles into my personal Goldilocks zone for outdoor activities, I am reminded of the spring just a few months ago.

I escaped to the woods several times a week throughout March and April. This is among the best of times to visit the wooded hills and valleys of Ohio and Kentucky, as their gifts are many:

The soft outer layer of clothing that we shed in the gentle warmth of the midday sun, and return to in the crepuscular chill of the day’s margins.

The brilliant colors of life: green, yellow, white, and purple, bursting forth from beneath the carpet of fallen leaves as they wrestle free from winter’s grip.

The symphony of the waters that trickle, tumble, and rush into the valleys which are swelling to receive them.

This is very much enough of a reason to seek out Nature in the places where she makes her presence most felt, but this is not the only gift I was giving myself. There was the shroud behind which I was able to pass as I explored this harmony of nature, and appreciated the understanding one gains through simple observation of it. This has always given me some measure of solace. I have never feared in the lonely dark of the wilderness, or its many fearsome beasts. My only fear has ever come from the unknowable, unpredictable, and unruly vicissitudes of human interaction. Capricious women, antagonistic men, and petulant children are the fauna of a civilized life, a life which was best left behind as frequently as possible while grappling with my frustrations in dealing with it.

Knowing that I could place, on these small journeys, the impenetrable fortress of dense thickets, rushing water, and towering cliffs between myself and the toxicity of modern life, was a source of great restorative power.

The Hook of Plenty provided numerous opportunities to bring a companion along on these little trips, but I almost always chose to travel alone. It was both sad and uplifting, freeing and desolate, empty and yet quite full.

The Cloak of Solace is difficult to share. It does not have much space for conversations about the people, places, and events in that world so deliberately left unattended. It is a meditative space. It is a refuge. It is an asylum, not for humanity but from humanity. Yet, as nurturing as it had become and as content as I had sometimes felt within it, I had also felt a desire to share that asylum with someone, as strange as it sounds. It is a conflict, of course, and one not resolved through any small measure.

As I went forward, and as I did slip further beneath the Cloak of Solace, its color and shape cascaded through a deep, soft green, and had developed into a full canopy over me which spread as far as I could see. Safe and comfortable, my grip relaxed and the cloak fell onto my shoulders, revealing that there, in the forest of chance, there was another. I felt myself drawn towards her quiet charm in the long days of summer. Time passed more quickly then, and a muted glimmer of hope grew in the place that had, in spring, seemed only big enough for one. We grew closer. We learned more. We visited rivers and mountains and cities together. Still cautious I suppose, and yet still persisting, we continue into the still darkness of uncertainty. The Cloak dangles behind me, and its verdant calico now yields to orange and yellow and red beneath a sky that is every day less troubled with light. As the colors fade, and the cooling drapery of summer is broken from its heights to become the warming carpet of autumn, a feeling of curious and careful enthusiasm beckons me to its tender light, offering, but not promising, to illuminate the dark of winter’s cold cradle. For someone whose spirit has been tempered in a few painful failures over the past years, that’s a pretty good feeling.

I want to point out that I met this person just living my normal life, and not through a service or an app or a website. Indeed it happened so soon after I had rejected that endless chase, plagued by the Hook of Plenty and the narrow keyhole of judgement through which we look without ever seeing, that I will admonish once more the hamster wheel of online dating as well as its perennial and fair-weather participants as the fruitless exercise in mutually assured frustration that I consider them to be.

We were just two people engaged in an activity that we both genuinely enjoy, and I believe it is the persistence of those very real and long-established shared interests and sensibilities that provide, several months later now, what seems like a foundation that can support a meaningful and mutually-enriching relationship, should we choose to do the work of building one.

If I seem reticent, it’s only the past talking. I’ve gone too fast and crashed a few times, so I’m just trying to be mindful of the throttle in hopes that I can avoid overusing the brakes, bumpers, or airbags. Steady as she goes this time, as I have almost certainly tried everything else.