When was the last time you awoke with no obligations? No commitments and no task list to complete? It is a startling reality when it comes-- your habits have no relevance any longer and your decisions seem little more than expressions of whim. In the final sunny hours of autumn on the Oregon coast my whims are all outdoors, traipsing about the exposed hillsides of the Cascade Head preserve or stopping in woods riddled with squirrels in furious fits of activity that may or may not serve them in the bleak months to come.

In the morning mist yesterday, with the drone of the Pacific Ocean a companion far below, a small portion of the dry headland on which I stood seemed to shift at the point where vision became guess work. It took a moment to discern that  a herd of elk were making their way for a copse of birch. That evening, as I left my cabin to give a short artist talk, two deer paused in their foraging by the front deck to look up and ascertain the nature of my intentions.

One cannot have a flock of birds enfold them and avoid feeling moved to some swelling of spirit. And to regard the way that the spirit is moved; to categorize the magnitude of profundity in any given moment, that takes time which cannot be already monopolized with task lists and the steady pressure of other's expectations. What arises in days of utter freedom is a gradual letting go of the false friends: Routine, Obligation, Expectation. In their stead one has to listen to the whims, and accept them for more than that.