"and things slowly come back into perspective"

 Cannon Beach, one of my special places

"Cooking is the only part of housekeeping I manage with any grace; it's something like writing a book: you look in the refrigerator and see what's there, choose all the ingredients you need, and a few your husband thinks you don't need, and put them all together to concoct a dish.  Vacuum cleaners are simply something more for me to trip over; and a kitchen floor, no matter how grubby, looks better before I wax it...Every so often I need OUT; something will throw me into total disproportion, and I have to get away from everybody - away from all these people I love most in the world - in order to regain a sense of proportion. 

I like hanging sheets on lines strung under the apple trees - the birds like it, too.  I enjoy going out the incinerator after dark and watching the flames; my bad feelings burn away with the trash.  But the house is still visible, and I can hear the sounds for a few minutes.  My special place is a brook in a green glade, a circle of quiet from which there is no visible sign of human beings.  There's a natural stone bridge over the brook, and I sit there, dangling my legs and looking through the foliage at the sky reflected in the water, and things slowly come back into perspective...If I sit for a while, then my impatience, crossness, frustration, are indeed annihilated, and my sense of humor returns."

A Circle of Quiet, by Madeleine L'Engle