I went camping this weekend, in the midst of the redwoods in the northern part of the state. To tell the truth, I was not totally looking forward to it. I was stressed and anxious about a lot of different things, and I felt that I didn’t have time to leave town for three days. I wasn’t looking forward to being cold and unshowered or to sleeping on the hard ground and waking up stiff and sore.

We camped on the beach, staking our tent right in the sand in sight of the waves and the swooping gulls. We made hot chocolate on a little propane stove and roasted marshmallows for s’mores over a roaring fire. And all the time, I was worrying, with a sense of nagging anxiety pulling at the edges of my mind. The stress crept in on soft feet like the thick fog edging the coast. And, like the fog, it lingered.

A funny thing happened while I was camping, though. It took a little while for the coastal wind to blow the anxiety right out of me, but it did. It took a little while for the moon over the ocean to settle my mind into a calmer shape, but it did. And it took even longer for me to let go enough to really see the beauty that was everywhere around me: the towering redwoods rising like spires toward the sun; the decaying stumps of uprooted trees that formed elaborate and twisty sculptures alongside the trail that we hiked on the second day; the exhilarating power of the blue-grey ocean as it sent wave after wave after wave toward my toes as we walked along the beach. But I did let go. I let go of myself enough to come home to myself, which is the paradoxical way in which it always seems to happen in my life.

So this is what I did today: today, I came home to myself.