Located in Princeton, NJ, I find myself gravitating towards this park on days when I need to reset.
I first discovered this park when I had been assigned a case for work nearby. It was a nice place to take a break from my fast-paced and at times high-stress job as a homecare occupational therapist.
Just as I was climbing the first hill towards the meadow from the parking lot I came across the poem below. Since 2010 the park has had a mile-long, nature-themed poem trail, thanks to the generosity and creativity of Scott and Hella McVay. 49 poems in total from various countries and cultures, I connected most to the following poem:
The Peace of the Wild Things
Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
