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The Hemenway woods of Blue Hills were limpid, the spaces between the slender trees honey-combed with green-gold light; just what I needed. This place was about its own business--birds whistling and calling, tiny stream purling, woodpecker knocking.  People walked, ran or biked through, planes flew overhead, traffic whizzed by, but the woods was a place of unconcern; it had other things on its mind.

Its mind, as if it had one, but there was one mind scrabbling around Wildcat Notch (so-called)--mine and it was aware of my body sliding on the slippery leaf layers covering the slopes, walking over gullies on trees fallen across them, snagging on sticks and stumps, clutching at corners of crags, sinking into spongy moss, looking up through the canopy. I felt like a mite cavorting on the back of an elephant. The woods let me use it like a gymnasium, but took not the slightest notice; made not the smallest reply. Even as I lay on the ground, to the flies, I was just a place to land. I was not even anonymous; just a feature.

What a relief from the expectations that fill everywhere else. Perhaps that is why we go to such places, and in fact, the parking lots were full of empty cars.