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I often feel more like a member of the clergy than of the medical profession, and it makes me realize how much the two professions have in common… I have seen fellow physicians retiring years earlier than they had planned after succumbing to compassion fatigue, the medical equivalent of battle fatigue known to veterans of armed conflict… When I feel stressed, I climb a mountain or get in my carbon-fiber canoe, and head for one of the thousands of ponds, lakes, and streams in the Adirondacks to reconnect with nature. Personal crises seem much less important when I am standing on a mountain summit or floating across a tranquil pond, surrounded by wilderness in every direction. There I can fill my brain (and my camera) with images of the heavenly landscape.