During this afternoon’s walk, I stopped abruptly on the footpath and looked down. Fullness warmed and enlarged my entire being, despite cutting winds swirling leaves like shape-shifters and chilling my cheeks. I was fully alive in the moment. I could not move.

Before me stretched a mash of reds from burning bush shrubs, of lemon-yellows from overhanging ashes, of sepias from spent mimosa branches, of crinkly rusts from the London plane tree: all set off by the asphalt’s blackness and the oatmeal sky. On the other side of the chain-link fence, a solitary female cardinal peered from within a stripped shrub.

Such is wonder that used to accompany me on solitary walks, especially in the nearby woods when I was able to walk, without assistance. My senses of sight, smell, touch, and hearing embodied me within each epiphany that drew wordless gratitude and humility as it did this afternoon.

Wonder, indeed, is evidence of the sacred faculty of the imagination with which everyone is endowed. The task for many is to cultivate it through solitary nature walks and pondering significant literature from past ages, especially poetry. Even a folk tale like the Russian The Baba Yaga will open this world to the magnificence of our blessed humanness.