I don’t know what tomorrow will be like, but today was a good day. My son and I hiked a short trail along a tidal pond on the Northern Neck of Virginia. The water is covered with lily pads, though today for the first time we didn’t hear any frogs. Perhaps the impending storm. We walked to the end, noting the cooling air and how in a month or so the trail will be beautiful for the oaks’ changing leaves.

We drove to Hughlett Nature Reserve, which is basically a wooded area with trails that lead to a long stretch of beach on the Chesapeake. Other than an elderly couple who left as we arrived, we were alone, which is astonishing when you consider the beauty of both the area and the day. The rest of the weekend is going to be a washout because of Tropical Storm Ophelia, but today, with twenty or twenty-five miles per hour winds and no rain was perfect for beach combing. We walked down one wooden walkway out to a crow’s nest from which we could see nearly to the Eastern Shore as well as up and down the bay. Normally, there would be egrets and herons as well as countless gulls and sandpipers, but none today, again, because of the storm. Once we came upon an eagle who refused to leave one spot on the beach no matter how close we approached her. Not today.

But on that platform with the perfect breeze, the temperature just enough for what I wore, and the rough seas in full demonstration of nature’s moods, a sense of peace swept through me. I could have stayed, should have stayed.

We leave these moments in nature too soon. I suppose we are hardwired to change what we’re doing every so often. I don’t think it’s attention span or even retention span. And I don’t think we get bored. I suspect muscle memory engages and we take a deep breath and “move on,” as if we have another class to get to, or some appointment to keep. We did this too. We looked around for awhile and then left. More to see? Not from that vantage. We walked back to the car and eventually went home. But I could have stayed and when I got home I wondered why I didn’t.

But I don’t want to douse that sense of peace with analysis of leaving or time spent. Instead, I looked at a few pictures of today, remembered how I felt, and noted I’d like to go back in a few days. It was one of those moments; we’ve all had them. Moments in which we are completely present without memories or anticipation bleeding into the now. We just are, and it is beautiful.

I’ve had more than my share, and I’m forever grateful for having such a life which afforded those times.

Like the Northern Lights in northern Norway one March evening when the planet was covered in snow and the entire earth could reach up and touch green bands of light.

Standing on a rock at the end of the world in Fisterra, Spain, feet from Camino Kilometer Marker which read “0.”

Have you had those? Can you recall them quickly, feel the wind again? Hear and taste those moments again?

Standing on another rock, this time Chersky’s Rock above Lake Baikal, the absolute peace of a thousand miles of nothingness to the north, east, and west. Looking out and seeing what explorers saw for a thousand years, and more.

Something snapped outside, a branch perhaps. The wind is picking up and I can hear the long windchimes even from here on the other side of the house and sixty feet through the woods to where they hang. And we’re still twelve or more hours from the eye moving past.

Another moment of presence: Hurricane Isabele. I stood on the front porch in the pitch black of that September night, nearly exactly twenty years ago to the day, when thirty oak trees snapped like sticks and fell, on the driveway, in the woods, across the yard, everywhere. I had loved the wind before then, always tilted my head toward it to feel it brush my face. Since that night a score of years ago, the wind remains in perfect sync with my anxiety. Tonight it is not so bad, but I just heard something snap. I’ll end up on the porch of course. Such a day of complete peace followed by such high anxiety, as if the peace was a respite offered to me in preparation for tonight.

My father and I went whale watching once off of Virginia Beach and we saw a humpback breach the choppy Atlantic waters and roll onto her back, go under again, her tail swinging well into the air before slapping down and moving on. That moment.

That sunset across the Great Salt Lake I wrote about recently.

A golf game with my father, my brother, and my son, followed by lunch, endless laughter. That day. The one during which my brother drove a golf ball through someone’s house window, my father backed over a sign in the parking lot, my son drove the golf cart over a garbage can and flattened it, and I, well, I tried to cover the bottom of a lake with Callaway balls. Give me that day now, one more time again.

A quiet tearoom that no longer exists in Prague. I went there every night for a month, had spiced tea and apple strudel and wrote, listened to beautiful music, walked back to my apartment near the castle at midnight.

Today. On the platform reaching out over the tidal marsh along the Chesapeake across the river at Hughlett Nature Reserve.

When we think ahead, life seems to stretch out like some airport runway, and it reaches out beyond our vision, further than conceivable for not knowing how long it will take, what will happen along the way, unforeseen moments of joy or sorrow. But when we think back, our minds are able to bypass the minutia and go immediately and exactly to a specific moment. It is why life seems to have gone so fast; we don’t need to retrace our steps—we simply chose a memory and beam our minds to that moment. The past is accessible like a quick Image Search, whereas the future is a speculative climb up endless rungs. So of course life in retrospect seems so swift. I think of the platform and the wind and the sound of the crashing waves and today seems fast; just that moment eight hours ago now might well have been last week. But I’m there, now, even as I type this.

But this wind, that cracking outside, the windchimes, the gusts in the tops of trees, all indicate this storm is still approaching and I cannot conceive of its conclusion—and I’m guessing it is going to be a very long night, despite the fact that tomorrow night I will once again think to today’s moment out at the bay and be there again instantly, as if time were mine to manipulate.

It isn’t though, time. It is clearly out of my hands.

Sitting on the rocks on Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way drinking wine and watching the waves across the north Atlantic.

Drinking frappes with my mother, talking about life, laughing about life.

Sitting in beach chairs on the gulf, Malibu Rum and OJ with Mango juice, just being there without baggage or appointments.

Something else cracked, or the same branch/tree cracked further and soon I’ll hear that familiar and haunting sound of wood hitting earth in the dead of night.

There are more, some tragic, some deeply transforming. I’ve been lucky to have a life of moments.

When I was in college I hiked to a hillside across the river behind campus and sat in a clearing in the woods. The great spiritual writer and monk Thomas Merton used to sit there when he taught briefly at the college, and so the spot became known as Merton’s Heart. I hiked to Merton’s Heart and sat and wondered what, since I would graduate just days later, I wondered what I would do with the rest of my life. I knew clearly unlike most of my classmates who mapped out some logical and ambitious future, that I had absolutely no idea. I’m not kidding. I had no idea.

And I’m not kidding about this either: I still don’t.

But my senses are all alive and conscious of where I’ve been. Really, I wouldn’t trade anything for where I’ve been.

Like sitting on a pile of blankets in a shed in a small Mexican village with my friend Diego, laughing about the trinkets sold at the market and drinking Tecate Beer.

Standing with friends on the summit of Mt. Wachusett in central Massachusetts watching kettles of hawks circle above.

Sitting on the steps to the house here at Aerie, ready to explore the woods with my then six-year-old, remembering my son’s birth in one retrospect instant but not yet knowing—not able to possibly conceive—where we would go in the decades ahead.