A few weeks ago we showed you the pavilion going up in the pasture, raw log posts, a shade sail stretched overhead, grass still growing up around the bases. It's finished now, and it turns out the frame wasn't the last thing Zac had planned for it.

Across the eight beams that run along the top of the structure, our son inscribed eight quotes, each one his own choice. Nobody asked him to do it. He just decided the space needed something more than shade and lumber, and this is what he put there:

"Time spent amongst the trees is never wasted time." Katrina Meyer 

"Where flowers bloom, so does hope." Lady Bird Johnson 

"The earth has its music for all who will listen." Reginald Holmes 

"Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives." Clarence Odbody 

"Nature is the art of God." Dante Alighieri 

"In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks." John Muir 

"To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." Mahatma Gandhi 

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." Psalm 19:1

It's a strange mix on paper: a movie angel next to Dante, a first lady next to scripture, a naturalist next to a line about touching lives. But it fits the place. Wild Woods was never built around one philosophy or one kind of guest. It's a working farm that happens to also be a nature retreat, and the people who built it, us included, don't all think about land and quiet and meaning the same way. Zac's beams are honest about that.

The pavilion itself is built for group day retreats, meetings, and outdoor dinners, the parts of Wild Woods that don't fit inside the dome or the treehouse. Now that it's done, sitting under it means sitting under eight sentences somebody chose on purpose, about trees and soil and the kind of noticing that takes actual time.

If you want to see it in person, check current availability for Group Retreats at wildwoodsretreat.com.