We are born from places of manicured lawns; places where bushes become shrubs that in turn become hedges serving the neat straight edges of streets, developments, blocks, boundary lines and ordinances. We weeded and trimmed them, sometimes begrudgingly and sometimes in the happy contentment of the illusion of order they displayed in their albeit obsequious presence. This yearning for control we practiced with hedge clippers can only be quieted in the untamed woods - the North Woods, where the seasons color the landscape in bold contrasting lines of Green mountainous horizons of Summer, orange hues of Fall, barren brown and blinding white of Winter - and Spring - the only season defined more by the sounds of becoming - the hum of insects, the crack of dead branches, and the teeming babble of engorged brooks and streams cascading down the mountains. Here, in time and space too grand to control, we are part of the elemental landscapes that quiet the doubt and bring us back to the desire for communal affirmation, whether that be with the each other, ourselves, or nature - making peace with it all.- TAJ—