For the past few New Years, Lin, Pizza, and I have taken a long weekend trip to a town no more than a few hours from home. The intention is always simple: slow down, reflect, and get clear on how we want to enter the year ahead. This year we landed in Chestertown, MD, a small college town about an hour and a half away. It is a grounding mix of small town vibes and wide open nature along the Chester River. (The shed below was our AirBNB)
If I ever try to imagine heaven on earth, I think the pace would feel a lot like these New Years trips. It helps that emails tend to quiet down around the holidays, and I can feel my nervous system slowly recalibrating in real time. There is a kind of settling that happens. It is wonderful.
There were many standouts on this trip, most of them captured in the photos below. What is not pictured is a book I have returned to again and again, The Way of the Heart by Henri Nouwen, now for the fifth time. This most recent reading landed deeper than any before. Nouwen writes about the practices of solitude, silence, and prayer not as lofty ideals, but as lived realities that require space.
Being away (and unhurried) allowed his words to move from my head into something more embodied. That is often the challenge with spiritual books. When read in the middle of full, noisy weeks, their wisdom can feel abstract. Given time and quiet, though, something different happens. The words begin to take root.
“Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life.” -Henri Nouwen
I came home from the weekend with a softer relationship to my own life. Photographing these moments and later returning to the images has become a simple ritual, helping me notice what I might otherwise pass by.
