Peace.

September 4, Steamboat Springs.

This morning I stole an hour away from the circus, away from the baby, away. I went to the mountains, to a Steamboat Springs landmark called Fish Creek Falls, a short enough excursion so that I could be within easy return should I need to.
I went in search for peace and quiet, nature, and were it not for the throngs of people reminiscent of the Champs Elysées on a Saturday afternoon during the annual spring sales and the chopper hovering above, the picturesque little falls would have given me just that.
After ten minutes of walking on one of the trails starting at the falls I finally found the peace I'd come looking for, among the beautiful birches, my favorite trees, silence, precious silence, not that silence of Simon and Garfunkel fame but the utter silence of the forest, not even wind in the branches, only my own breathing and my footsteps disturbing it. And at the same moment the smell of the forest, transporting me in a second's time thousands of miles back home to the Alps in France, in one breath thousands of miles away, to the peace you find after hours of hiking, high up in the mountains, alone with your thoughts and the wonder of nature, in utter happiness.
It was but a minute before the chopper was back and people appeared on the trail again, the precious silence shattered, but that minute was like a glass of water for a desert hiker.