The Flow Stories Collection No. 3 — Life on the Danube drenches the soul in our eternal joy, the joy that emanates from quite literally going with the flow. The day was dark with heavy rain clouds when we boarded the bus that would ferry the four of us from Vienna to Melk Abbey. Well, technically from Vienna to the port where we would pick up the riverboat.

When the alarm clock goes off at five o’clock in the morning when evey brain cell and muscle in your body is sleeping soundly, you have to remember why you have to get up at this perilously early hour.

How shall we reinvent ourselves when life’s troubles surround and engulf us? Splash in a wild mountain stream, caress your soul beneath the stars on a desert plateau, wander amongst the aspen with the wind drifting among the leaves golden and fluttering, search for the flitting yellow swallowtail butterflies in meadows lush, and behold the setting sun across the water. The glow of wild places inspires profoundly.

So we may be sure in the face of total astonishment which thrills us, nature really is that beautiful!

Once in awhile nature simply takes our breath away. We found the entrance to Lower Canyon more easily the second time around. A narrow crack in the sun baked earth, astonishingly small, marked the spot where we would descend. I liked the coolness on my brow, quiet relief from the desert afternoon heat above. I had been dreaming about returning to the quiet for two years since last we emerged from the belly of Mother Earth. I needed to hear myself think. I needed to soak my soul in these canyon walls aflame and burnished by the Arizona sun peaking through the crevices above.