A few days ago in the leadup to the election I was asked to describe how I'm doing by stating which National Park I feel most like. I've been feeling anything but expansive and powerful these days, words I usually associate with these places, but I've been thinking about it and I think I've come up with my answer. As we await results of the Presidential Election I've decided I'm feeling like Angel's Landing in Zion -- nervous, in a precarious situation, holding on, trying to keep my eyes focused on the beautiful view in the distance, not looking back, not looking down.

I spent the majority of October in Alpine Texas, working distraction free and gearing up for the launch of Punch Needle Academy, punctuated by stays in Big Bend National Park and the Glass Mountains north of Marathon TX. On our way to Texas we drove through Arizona and New Mexico, and we spent a few nights in Tonto National Forest. We camped in landscapes that look like early paintings of America and took our breath away.

West Texas was quiet between small town life and Covid closures, but it allowed for work, introspection and really meaningful time spent with friends, forging new connections. After months of seclusion at home in Los Angeles, I was not prepared for the level of immense joy I felt connecting with friends and strangers in person, creating new memories and experiences.

We spent a weekend camping in Big Bend over the new moon, and we could see the milky way and all the stars spread out above us. In this year of camping and west coast road trips, I have marveled at the beauty of this country, while also being horrified at the ugliness we humans can bring to it with our politics, hate and divisiveness. Outside, away from civilization, sitting by a fire and looking up at the sky, I am just a tiny speck in the atmosphere. I feel the vastness of our universe, and it calms me.

This feeling is best captured in the Wendell Berry poem, The Peace of Wild Things:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

I have memorized this poem, and I whisper it when I wake in the night, when my heart and mind races and I can't sleep. I channel the peace of wild things, the day-blind stars just waiting with their light, and for a moment I too am free.

I've spent the past 9 days off the grid on a camping road trip up through Northern California. My partner and I traveled through the Sequoia, Stanislaus and Mendocino National Forests, Sonoma, Marin and Big Sur, taking in all the beauty that California has to offer, from cool forests and lakes to vast sunny meadows, sweeping mountain views and curving coastlines. Nature is where I recenter. It brings everything back into focus, allows me to breathe, and reminds me what is really important.

More than any other time in my life, I am conscious of the feeling of living through history. June was an uncomfortable month. An awakening of sorts. Between the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic affecting the global population and the current fight for racial justice here in the United States, a massive spotlight has been turned on the flaws in our country -- our police force, our unchecked capitalism, the racism built into the systems that are the foundation of this nation, the human and natural resources that we have been exploiting without regard -- and we must not look away.

The energy and momentum that we're experiencing is due to a unique set of events that have all converged, and we have the distinct opportunity to make change right now. We are not only living through history, but we are all actively participating in its creation with our actions -- or lack of action. We have a chance to create real change, to ensure a better world for future generations, not only for people all across the globe, but for the very survival of the planet itself. We cannot go back to "the way things were". There is no going backwards. The world has already changed, and it is up to us whether we force it to drag us along with it kicking and screaming, or whether we embrace the change as an opportunity to re-imagine the very world that we are living in, and be a part of its evolution.