Letter: Could you live here?

Perhaps you’ve seen the invitation.

You’d have to go without cable, phone, internet, electricity, water, and indoor plumbing.

But, in my opinion, my gosh, I’m there in a heartbeat.

Because here’s where you’d be, and the 10-inch band of wallpaper bordered in strips of cedar that circumscribe the walls in my purposefully designed rustic office reminds me every day.

Of places I’ve been.

The scene is set in some remote valley, wispy clouds obscuring but a few of the many mountainous peaks that tower above a log cabin, smoke curling from the rock chimney, nestled among the Evergreens, a boat pulled up on the shore of a river that runs through it.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and in that growing up was treated by my dad’s love of the out-of-doors to the nooks and crannies of the streams and brooks and rivers of the mountains that I so love the picture of these words of wisdom:

“Wise words are like deep waters; wisdom flows from the wise like a bubbling brook.”

It is not surprising to me, and perhaps not to you, that wisdom is likened to such lonely, remote places, the water gurling nearby, the happy, contented sound of water chortling almost human-like as it eddies behind and around, cascades over and down rocks and boulders, moss-covered trees forming bridges over and extending barked fingers into pools.

“The well-spring of wisdom,” said one wise philosopher, “is where there is a sound understanding, and a deep, well-informed mind, its wisdom and its counsels an incessant stream, bright and clear.”

One of the memories I cherish most with my father is fishing our way through the mountains, days on end, often abandoning the trails to access those otherwise difficult to reach secluded deep, dark swirls of water as it turns back on itself before it continues on its way.

Likely too old now to make the journey, I’m there, if only in my mind, in accompanying the young man in the movie “The River Why?” as he traipsed through the mountains in search of the stream-bound rainbow trout and in the process catches his dream.

Transported yet again am I in “A River Runs through It”, directed by Robert Redford, which movie won – not surprisingly to me anyway given my penchant for the prospect of something for the frying pan caught in the pristine and primitive waters of Western Montana – an Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

Described as majestic and magical, “A River Runs through it” is also the name of a cabin where “the rhythmic flow of vibrant emerald green waters lulls to sleep.”

The closing lines from Redford’s film, “I am haunted by waters,” haunt my dreams as well.

I have been there.

And long to return.

To the quiet places.

It’s where wisdom is found.