There are two people I recall reading in my life (there may be some I forgot) Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Thomas Merton. Marquez was a novelist, a wizard of emotion and feeling. Both are dead, but their works are very much alive.

Merton was a brilliant and conflicted Trappist Monk and wannabe hermit who spent much of his life writing in solitude in a hermitage built for him in a Kentucky monastery. His work sparked my move up to the country in 2020 to start my Hero Journey.

I guess I never really came home again. Yet I found a home here.

Merton’s insights and wisdom, and solitude have greatly affected my life and my search for spirituality. He was one of the creators of the modern idea of meditation.

Marquez is different, he was a genius with words, and every new book was a special moment for me.

Whenever I read something from either of them, I’m uplifted, inspired, enchanted, or improved.

Merton and then Maria helped me see the trees’ beauty and mysticism to help me fulfill a long desire to be closer to nature and to animals.

When I met Maria, I gave her a copy of one of his enchanting and very spiritual books about nature; it was called “when the trees say nothing,” edited by Kathleen Deignan, with drawings by John Guiliani.

I read it while meditating this morning, alone in the living room, my quiet place. It’s beautiful and ought to be shared.

My cold is receding slowly and stubbornly.

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“…I live in the woods out of necessity. I get out of bed in the middle of the night because I must hear the silence of the night alone, and, with my face on the floor, say psalms alone in the silence of the night.

…the silence of the forest is my bride, and the sweet dark warmth of the whole world is my love, and out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world.”

–Thomas Merton