Fields, hills, trees… these are magical things.

I know this, because, as a very small child, I spent hours looking out car windows, wondering at it all. At home, I poured over illustrations by Richard Scarry, and I was sure that every road, every house, and every animal held a story — and that the landscape itself was the book.

Every chance I got, I wanted to explore. I frequently wandered off, and got lost a time or two (or three). I explored woods and bayous, lakes and fields. When I was old enough to ride a bike, I used that. When I was old enough to drive a car, I used that.

People could overwhelm me, but observing and exploring — those were like nourishment to me, and to my imagination.

We were meant to explore and make sense of our worlds, to build pictures in our heads from these explorations. We were not meant to go through life unnoticing, because GPS has it all figured out for us.

We were meant to see, not just look at pictures.

We were meant to learn, not just look things up.

We don’t really live in a world without frontiers; in fact, we have them, and they’re largely unguarded. The map is not the world, the story is not the person, and the picture is not the thing.

Freedom from the paralyzing anxiety of modern life is available: it is that field off in the distance, or that trip, or that walk over to have a conversation with someone in person.

Fields, hills, trees… these are magical things, and you and I — we were born to know the magic.