My Favorite Book

I'm only 3 posts away from accomplishing my challenge to myself to write a blog post every day for the month of November, and tonight has probably been the hardest to think of something.  Some nights I had little time, so I quickly posted a poem, or some other short entry.  Tonight, I think I've been looking at the computer trying to think of something to write about for at least over 30 minutes.

Earlier this month, I wrote a post sharing some book recommendations from a list of what I considered the best books I had read this year.  So, tonight, I thought I would share what was and is my favorite book.

The River Why by David James Duncan.  I read the book my senior year in high school.  Re-read it during the summer between high school and college.  Read it several more times during college, and several times since then.  It continues to be a  I don't imagine that the book is anything particularly special for most people, but for me, I've always been able to relate to it and the primary character, I've enjoyed the symbolism of a novel "about" fishing and soul-searching, and the stories and characters make me laugh.

Simply, the book is about a man's search for meaning, for his place on this planet and in the Universe.  But it also contains his search for meaning in his every day routine, in relationships with his family and eventually the love of his life.  It's a story I've always found meaning in, and applicability to my own life.

Below I thought I'd share on of my favorite passages from the novel

Dawn came up from behind the hills, extending her old fingertips of rose.  I plodded on toward the outstretched fingers and the glimmering continued; fish-bites, birth-pangs, I didn't know what they were.  But the further I walked, the less I cared. It was enough to feel them.

I trudged on, helpless to catch hold on things, but hopeful.  And when the first sunlight lit upon the tallest ridge's highest vineleaf maple, when the rosy fingers faded into blue behind the mountain, when the vineleaf's leaves shone out in scarred and blazing scarlet atop that wave-like ridge of dull alder gold a chill shot from my thights to the top of my head, surged up my backbone, again and again - for in that moment I felt as though an oldest, greatest, longest-lost Friend had come to walk the road, unseen beside me . . . 

I think the passage encapsulates my spiritual feelings, in that I never feel more "spiritual," more connected with existence, than I do when standing in awe of our planet, and of our Universe.