There’s something about walking in the woods.
It clears my mind. It helps my body relax. It brings me back to the present moment.
I love the wide-open expansiveness of it—the woods, the pond, the trail winding through it all. I love the feel of the trail underneath my feet. There’s something grounding about simply putting one foot in front of the other with nowhere I have to be except exactly where I am.
And I meet friends along the way.
There’s Jim, a war veteran who continues to walk even when I know he is in pain. And with Jim comes Gunner, his beautiful dog who literally smiles.
I keep wanting to call Gunner a little guy. He is not a little guy. He knocked me over once. 😂
But he may be one of the happiest dogs I’ve ever met.
Then there’s Reba McEntire.
Yes, that’s her name.
Reba is a little fluffy poodle who walks the trail with her two mamas. And unlike Gunner, she actually is little.
She doesn’t even need a leash. She’s completely chillaxed, loving to everybody she meets, and seems perfectly content just making her way down the trail greeting the world.
She makes me smile every time I see her.
But not everyone I meet on the trail is smiling.
Sometimes I pass people who are clearly struggling. People who are hurting. People walking slowly because every step looks difficult. I’ve seen people barely moving, and yet there they are.
They’re out there doing the deal.
There is something about that that moves me.
It reminds me of the resilience of human beings. We hurt. We struggle. We carry things nobody else can see. And somehow, we keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Sometimes literally.
And because I’ve slowed down enough to notice, those are also the moments when I get to encourage someone. To say hello. To smile. To acknowledge that I see them.
Maybe that’s one of the gifts of becoming present.
You start noticing the people around you.
You notice when someone might be suffering.
You notice when someone could use a little encouragement.
You notice each other.
And maybe connection begins with something that simple.
Nature does that to me. It slows me down enough to notice.
I notice people.
I notice animals.
I notice the sound of my feet on the trail. The movement of the trees. The way the light changes. The things growing alongside the path that I might have walked right past on another day.
Nature doesn’t seem to ask me to figure anything out.
It doesn’t ask me to hurry.
It doesn’t need me to accomplish anything.
It simply invites me to be there.
And when I am there long enough, something in me begins to settle.
And that quiet is where I love to talk with my God.
I talk to Him about how I’m feeling. About what is going on in my life. About the things I don’t understand. I ask what He wants from me. Sometimes I ask for direction. Sometimes I don’t ask for anything at all.
I just walk with Him.
There is something about being surrounded by trees and water and sky that quiets my busy brain enough for me to listen.
Not just talk.
Listen.
Out there, I can be still and know.
I can remember that there is something so much bigger than I am. Something I don’t have to control or completely understand.
And for a little while, I can stop trying to figure everything out and simply be part of it.
A dog smiling.
A friend walking through pain.
A stranger refusing to give up.
A trail beneath my feet.
Water.
Trees.
Sky.
Life.
And somewhere along the way, I think these walks became part of the dream for Finding Grace Sanctuary.
Because I want other people to have a place where they can experience this too.
A place to get quiet enough to hear themselves again. To spend time in nature. To connect with animals. To notice another human being. To talk with God, if that is what they need. Or maybe just to sit quietly and breathe for a while.
A place where nobody is asking anything from them.
Where they can simply be.
Maybe that is part of what sanctuary means to me.
Not hiding from life.
Having a safe and quiet place to return to it.
Maybe that’s why I keep going back.
I used to think I went to the woods to get away from things.
Now I wonder if I go there to return to them.
To God.
To nature.
To other people.
To myself.
To what is actually here.
Maybe a walk in the woods isn’t really about where the trail takes us.
Maybe it’s about what we can finally hear—and who we can finally see—when we get quiet enough to walk it.
