Rich

We are surrounded
by a rich and fertile mystery.
Henry David Thoreau

For two years, two months, and two days
   Thoreau lived alone in a tiny self-built cabin
      in a woods on the edge of Walden Pond.
The pond was small: 61 acres.
The woods were hardly virgin:
   many trees had been cut for lumber twenty years before.
A few hundred yards away ran a well-used railroad track.
You could easily walk to town from there.
Still, it was in these surroundings that Thoreau
   wrote about being surrounded by "a rich and fertile mystery."
What an evocative combination of words!
So different from the adjectives we commonly expect
   to be placed in front of the word "mystery" these days.
But from experience Thoreau knew
   that mystery could be life-affirming, life-giving, life-enhancing.
He knew that mystery could hold Mystery.
Anywhere.
Everywhere.