I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

I invited a friend out of town to join me on a hike.

I was going on the long trail in Warren, Vermont.

I live in a forest.

Taking a walk is courteous.

The invitation from me is slightly expected of those who visit.

He looked skeptically and said,

You do know I'm from the Bronx. I said, and? He said, we don't do nature. I said, maybe it's time.

And that's not true. There's the Bronx Park.

Too many mosquitoes and spiders.

Plus, he said, walking past strangers wigs me out.

I was going to leave the conversation there, but then he asked,

why do you love the outdoors?

The question felt confrontational. Like the time my co-worker's husband at a party asked, what's with the birds? When he learned I was traveling to

watch a massive migration on the southern coast of Alabama. In those moments, I become unsettled. How do you discuss a space that is like a

personal cathedral? I wanted to speak to the physical and emotional benefits, but that feels

too much like pitching a free health checkup in the woods. Instead, I told them how I hear myself better in the

forest, that my mental clutter gives way to an exceptional quiet, to a probing for traces of life

beneath the ferns along the farthest floor in the green shadows.

I love the calls and trills of warblers and rose-breasted gross beaks,

the rushing sound of a brook over stone, the irrational belief, some might say, of connecting

with something larger.

...