Even just ankle deep, if you stand in flowing water that a creek or gurgling river rushes and caresses through toes, yours, as the feet that hold you all day long are tended, your eyes notice more. Nature works this way. She has no fee. These are ecosystems that participate towards equilibrium 24/7 and 365, repetitive cycles towards health.

When the human clock pinches me into a box, I go back to where my body began and that is outdoors. Begin we might in hospital brick and mortar, yet all the next days are the human body seeking equilibrium. No time clock to punch in nature so observing goes rogue.

Some painters have style dynamics that very up close only dots or points are colored vibrant with a brush. When you step back, though, all those nonsensical points design a coherent picture. My rogue noticings are like these paint brush dabs except the big picture might not occur. I am not sure. If I write and you follow, reader, then as pointy words finish, we can take a breathe and see what we have overall on the canvas, the screen, or the essay if that is a box we need as framing.

Semantics matter so let's begin there. If I say my family is camping for a while, what word that accurately describes the process is returning. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust means that what now is corporeal flesh will later return to the soil. In this way, my five senses and the sixth one intuition are most at rest physically when outdoors, a sort of returning home landz. Returning to nature's abundant home—taking our bodies to natural systems—brings optimal chance to absorb health.

Often before I begin returning home to nature some miscue will occur that tells me how separate I have gone. A few days ago I carry my iphone in one hand and my laptop in another and a random voice inquires, “Is that your car?” I cannot see the woman. As I go to source the sound, my feet search for grounding as I plunge over a four or five inch ledge, only on an ordinary sidewalk, at the Kohala Public Library on Big Island Hawai'i.

True to human fallibility, my phone goes up one direction in the air and the laptop another, while I am landing after flying a few feet forward. And I have taken an authentic free fall, so surprising, so realizing that the grass and soil caught me just fine. A soft landing my techie lives and I had for grass and earthly humus are supportive. Yet I counted the physical flailing as an omen that to the outdoors I must go. The woman's question had little sense and gravitating me in a nonsense direction was my cue to turn for discovery of ocean, sand, wind, and sunshine.

Several evenings before I had packed away material belongings that used to fit into an apartment that did not work anymore; I went for a stroll. Brief evening walks assist to let the day go, a prep for easy slumber. Walking on Akoni Pule in Hawi well into evening at 9 p.m. meant few cars, a crickety quiet, and stars bright enough I felt my hand could scoop them from the air. Breathing more even, senses satiated in warm tropical wind and I look to my feet, again—not in flowing creek water yet in good flow.

There on the grass several inches from the road that cars drive on and that squashing potential, a street lamp shines on a long high-kneed insect so like match sticks I wonder if this is a living creature, and yet this one is quite lively. For she has a feather on her back. Wedged into all those fine-point knobbly insect limbs is a feather, size of a postage stamp.

My own position in life had been feathering too as more than a few finance gifts facilitated the apartment and other material thrivings. Surfers in Hawai'i have quite a distinct language, one that I cannot fully decode, yet the word feather connotes all is quite well in life. So I accepted the financial feather to maintain all is quite well until it was not.

Then my feather felt like a weight on my back and so empathy is what I brought to the insect at my feet, struggling mightily in the artificial bright yellow street light. She almost threw the feather off a few times and alas the feather stick was stuck. Do I take action?

Taking absolutely no action is powerful. Observing the water flowing over your toes while standing smack in the middle of the river gives you pause. Noticing more around you can portray choices and options that you might not have otherwise seen. So, I waited and watched the insect. Mind your own business and have business to mind, my self and I had a conversation on. I paused. Then in a nano-second, I reached over, grabbed the insect, removed the feather, and replaced her on the grassy path. Total action time maybe five seconds. Intuition kicked in so I took action. Even a small feather weighs heavy on your back if misplaced.

Likewise when the family car, a hatchback 2003 Pontiac Vibe with 227,546 miles, was packed tight inside and my son's bike secured to the outside back door with a no nonsense bike rack, we had removed the feather. Meaning free for returning home landz, since the neighbor on the other side of a thin separating wall, who played loud music, fought with her husband, and shouted profanity at her preschool children, was quieted now. I took action.

For we have arrived to Spencer's campground and for several nights returning home gave serenity to breathing, to listening, to viewing, and to readjusting so my personal ecosystem called my body and all her needs, could relax. A bright moon turning full while rising in the dusk to starlight sky. An ocean swim that floats away any concern I had before diving in. Several evenings playing cards with my son and dining on Tonkotsu noodles, the simplicity of boiling water as dinner's only meal prep. Even so I do recall some broccoli cooked, too. All feather.

I asked and you read my question as to whether this writing will have a point. And I am decidedly not sure. What might count as intention is accepting life's random points as meaningful, for how random could the event be if any meaning is in there to begin? For example, the black cat. At Spencer's beach the location bridges mountain to sandy shoreline and not just any mountain—we have Mauna Kea, one of the tallest mountains on earth from bottom of the ocean to top of the last peak.

Given thousands of feet tall, the air circulates unpredictably especially when picking up speed from so high and barreling towards Spencer's low at the beach. Winds that hurl your tent to the ground are common. Having this experience before on prior expeditions, after several mellow nights with just calming air patterns this voyage, when the fierce wind began around 7 p.m. I absolutely knew I did not stand a chance.

Packing all our returning to home landz materials into a vacant shower stall in one facility worked quite well. In another spot I could even place an air mattress so while shrill winds howled all through the night I could “sleep” or allow my body some reclining rest. Yet my cell phone had too little battery to work well as an alarm clock so I walked to another pavilion area for plugging her in. As the phone charges and I sit on a park bench viewing the dark ocean a stone's throw away a black cat walks underneath several picnic tables close to where I sit. One of the cat’s eyes appears like a dark green olive and the other appears like placing a white egg on blackened toast—so varied are these eyes in size and color. At first, I am spooked.

Then I recall, and swiftly, that I am returning home landz for this exact moment. How would I ever see such a cat if locked up tight in an apartment. Maybe. Yet unlikely. Screeching winds around me, my phone charging, I will sleep in a cozy shower stall, and perhaps begin tomorrow on time. My feet are on the ground, and although I stand in no actual creek, so much flows around me, I start noticing, for sure. For when I turn to my right, sitting at another picnic bench is a woman who has eyes as eccentric as the cat. I exhale and give in to the giving up that I have any idea what is the what. Now do you understand why I cannot predict that the writing will have a point? Taking all of me just to observe.

The woman is retracted into herself, maybe the size of a healthy third grader, yet I place her at 40 years old even though she looks 60 or older. Her eyes are lemon-lime bright and squinty on a face with skin that sun weathered into submission a long while ago. Holding her knees tight to herself, sitting established on the bench, she also seems poised to jump if necessary.

Many women like her I have met over my decades into living life. The story is always long with many travails and consistent drug use (pills, alcohol, needles) is a given. What works a hundred times over is to welcome her into my zone through easygoing conversation—for the exact opposite is expected. So I go there and after a few minutes she even reciprocates a real smile. These few minutes are the sustenance to realize how lucky, how humble, how fortuitous any life goes, especially mine.

The black cat continues to walk the length of the pavilion, the one good eye assesses me. In softly spoken prayer I ask that the universe bring this cat more than the now of so little. Frail and thin and walking on uncertain paws, this cat needs a healthy dose of tlc. I have my hands full on life kuleana (responsibility) for now, but what I can waft are generous prayers the cat's way. She pauses a few times to absorb my efforts. Maybe they helped?

When I stride into the wind and make my way back across the beach strip, I return to supply and shelter. Another woman who exhibits better physical health yet also flying solo has showered and spruced, so she takes her reward in a cigarette lit, enjoying an inhale or two, before she turns around to walk deep into the dark on a sidewalk built by the US National Park Service, for that government monitors these lands where a Native Hawaiian heiau (sacred meeting place) is directly on the path where she walks. Only moonlight shines her way, yet maybe she will sleep adjacent. When I wake up at 5 a.m. or so the next morning I see the lemon-lime cat-eyes woman from the night before also walking this direction.

As I pack and organize the morning we are to leave after staying a few days, my historical third eye soothes me. Takes little imagination to so easily picture why life on Hawaii islands flourished to 950,000 natives during the early centuries inhabiting such intuitive and practical abundance discovered in these tropics. Goodness knows that the three women I describe—cat eyes, moon walker and myself—are not literal evidence of that life, yet the instinct to appreciate how nature gifts goodness so effortlessly is what myself and the other two sisters know, knew, and have known on heartfelt experience.

So perhaps we arrive at a point then, after all. Reading history on Hawaiian peoples demonstrates that full lives expand when attuned intimately with nature. After a few more days, some decisions need making on behalf of myself and family and yet. Until then, the mana (energy) required for that becomes full through a peaceful humm in my ear that blends ocean waves, bird chirps, and gentle trade winds. I can hear better after a few days outdoors. A steady breathing as I walk into the day, bright sunshine now, and even so I look around learning from nature how to be more fully human, a deep returning home landz to disover an evolving woman who I feel so grateful to be.