My Quiet Optimism.

Me and my trusty mustang, Winnie.

Growing up in the West, it’s easy to see the mountains, rivers, and wide open spaces as markers of time itself.

When I feel like I’m losing my grip on safety, belonging, or a sense of “rightness,” I think of a specific mountain I grew up seeing every day.

I imagine everything it has witnessed. How for millennia it stood untouched, and then within a *blink* humans climbed it, named it, claimed it.

To the mountain, we must seem insignificant. A fleeting moment in a long existence. Every fight, every battle, every triumph and failure, barely noticeable.

Maybe it’s odd, maybe even counterintuitive, but that sense of insignificance fills me with hope. I think it may actually be the thing nature grounds me to: the reminder that life is fleeting. That humans are not all-mighty or all-knowing. We are simply here, together, for a very small speck of time.

My back pasture ft the ever lovely Idaho summer sunset.

And with that realization, within that shared, equal experience, I begin to carry a quiet optimism. If I am not significant on my own, then we may as well share this land. Love this land. Care for it. Experience it fully…

Because it wasn’t made for any one of us. It’s the gift made for all of us, together.

It’s not the only thing we collectively need right now by any means…But if only it could be a spark.