For mindlovesmisery’s Sunday writing prompt: gift.

My sister and I were blessed by the gift of connection to outdoors. To forest, lake, field, desert, prairie. I sleep better in a tent on the warm earth than any house, ever. When the world is too much with me, or the news is too awful, or a patient dies of ovarian cancer and is younger than me….

…..I walk on the beach, in the forest, in my neighborhood. I sing back to the birds. I speak chickadee well enough that they perch on a branch close by and sing back. Or argue, perhaps. Swinging on a branch.

Outdoors is my church, my solace, my love, my connection with the earth, with nature, with the Beloved. Air, water, fire, earth, wood…. home is outdoors.