The Peace of Green Fields

Just another picture from last weekend's trip to Salalah. I think this is the very definition of rugged coastline. What strikes me about the picture now - and what struck me about it when I took it - was how much I wanted to get down to that beach. Like a lot of things in life, I suppose, it may not have been as magnificent as it looked from a distance, but it is an image - and an ideal - that I think I will hold in my heart for a long time. Marcus Aurelius proposed that the peace of green fields is always within us. I think I realized that unofficially long before I realized it officially. When I was growing up and things became unpleasant or even just boring I would always retreat to tramping around London with Sherlock Holmes or hiking through Middle Earth with Frodo. Growing up in the country in Indiana literature was my other world, which in reality was my inner world. When I began to travel I began to expand my green fields: the cliffs overlooking the Wadi Arabia up past the Monastery at Petra in Jordan; the beach at Port Elizabeth in South Africa; Lucca in Italy; the Ajanta caves in India, just to name a few. And now I'll add that beautiful beach at Mugasayl in Oman. Now, since I've never been there it may end up like the beautiful rocking horse from Inherit the Wind, but I guess it doesn't matter what it really is anyway. What matters is what it is in my heart.