While we can’t really get enough of Creek Running North blogger Chris Clarke’s whip-smart brand of humor (go read his post on The Top 25 Most Dangerous Fictional Unhinged Characters Who Are Dangerously Hurting America as soon as humanly possible), we’re also deeply smitten with the nature and science writer’s more poetic posts. One of his most lovely: this account of a hike through the Bay Area’s Mount Diablo State Park, wherein we learn about “the best moment of my life”:

“I used to leave my job, my love, my dog, I used to head for the east side of the Sierra Nevada and past it, and stoke a sunset fire in a few short deadened limbs of juniper, and it was my life reborn. An emergence from dreamtime; a waking from this petty annoyance and distraction, and I would shake myself off as from a drowse and remembering, re-enter my true life for a few hours. No mysticism, no grandiose oneness with the fire spirits. Sitting. Keeping the fire alive.

“A pair of riders will appear below me soon, and I will haul myself up to avoid being trodden upon. A hundred feet more to climb to make the saddle, and then I drop down the other side to climb absurdly steep again. The summit 1,700 feet above me will slide itself under my feet before I expect it. And then the long descent, and driving home through traffic into the next week and if I survive, I will return in a week, or two.

“This is the best moment of my life.”