If you live near a place where you can sit and listen to the sound of running water, count yourself lucky. Where I live one must drive many miles to hear such a thing.
When we used to go to the YMCA Camp of the Rockies once a year, the first thing I would do, upon entering the San Juan Mountains in SE Colorado was seek out a place in a national forest picnic area to sit and listen to water. Once at the camp itself outside Estes Park, I would make a daily morning walk down through the camp to the stream that separates the camp property from the national park, via narrow wooden bridges across a tributary of the Big Thompson. I would cross the bridge or not, but walk upstream in the brush until I found a place where I could sit isolated and unobserved on rocks near the water. I would the sound of the cascades overwhelm my senses. It was a deeply spiritual experience and I would find my thoughts turning to the Creator of all things, in a very peaceful way. I sometimes sat there literally for hours, whiling the morning away, fighting off the judgmental voice of teh world in my head, that would mock me for such idleness.
How I miss that. It seems a cruelty to be deprived of this in my current life circumstances, but it is what it is.
At least I am still a member of the camp. I just renewed my membership for another year, something I enjoy doing annually, just to contribute to the camp. My parents' ashes are there, after all, in the memorial wall, and someday maybe mine will be too.
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