Rachael

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“The future is dark, with a darkness as much of the womb as the grave.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power

“I thought about how grim I felt since leaving the Navajo Nation, and I tried to imagine my perfect life. Surely it wasn't this. How could perfection include loneliness and longing, filth and exhaustion, whispers of despair? It seemed there were countless other potential versions of this life that'd be so much better. I could spend hours fantasizing about them, wondering what that perfection might look like someday, wishing it would come soon. I could spend my entire life that way wondering, wishing. It'd be so easy. It was in fact, the inevitable result of believing that perfection was anything other than what already was. 'This minute that comes to me over the past decillions," Whitman wrote, "There is no better than it and now."If I couldn't find perfection in this, then what made me think I'd be able to find it tomorrow, next month or two decades from now? Peace had to be an inner perspective, not a specific and temperamental set of external conditions. The fire cackled, lighting up Jean-Sébastien and Cristelle in hues of yellow and orange, and I realized that this was my perfect life. It had to be.”
― Andrew Forsthoefel, Walking to Listen: 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time