The Wisdom of the Woods
“How deep our sleep last night in the mountain’s heart, beneath the trees and stars, hushed by solemn-sounding waterfalls and many small soothing voices in sweet accord whispering peace!
And our first pure mountain day, warm, calm, cloudless, –how immeasurable it seems, how serenely wild! I can scarcely remember its beginning.
Along the river, over the hills, in the ground, in the sky, spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm, new life, new beauty, unfolding, unrolling in glorious exuberant extravagance–new birds in their nests, new winged creatures in the air, and new leaves, new flowers, spreading, shining, rejoicing everywhere.”
–John Muir (Scottish-born American Naturalist, Writer, Founder of the Sierra Club, and “The Father of the National Park System,” 1838-1914)
“My First Summer in the Sierra: Illustrated Edition” (John Muir)
We Really Do Need Wild Places
“People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to be able to taste grace and know again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers.
To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd. It reminds us why, in those cases in which our plans might influence many future generations, we ought to choose carefully. Looking out on a clean plank of planet earth, we can get shaken right down to the bone by the bronze-eyed possibility of lives that are not our own.”
–Barbara Klingsolver (American Writer and Political Activist, 1955-)
The Vast Presence
“The silence of landscape conceals vast presence. Place is not simply location. A place is a profound individuality. With complete attention, landscape celebrates the liturgy of the seasons, giving itself unreservedly to the passion of the goddess. The shape of a landscape is an ancient and silent form of consciousness. Mountains are huge contemplatives. Rivers and streams offer voice; they are the tears of the earth’s joy and despair. The earth is full of soul ….. Civilization has tamed place. Left to itself, the curvature of the landscape invites presence and the loyalty of stillness.”
–John O’Donohue (Irish Poet, Author, Catholic Priest and Hegelian Philosopher, 1956-2008)
The Mystic View
To anyone trained in conventional science, the mystic view of the world usually seems to be nothing more than flowery poetry. But to anyone who has actually experienced it, it is more “Real” than anything that you can learn from a textbook. It is simply a different way of knowing, and it can be as useful and practical as the objective methods of inquiry. And far more meaningful to the individual!
“Every tree and plant and mole beneath the earth may hear the Voice of God and, hearing it, obey. Every sound you hear on earth is an echo of His Voice, and every light in every color comes from the dazzling radiance of His Eyes.”
–Geoffrey Hodson (English-born New Zealand Theosophist, Mystic, Teacher and Author, 1886-1983)
Sensing the Fabric of Life
“The shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea there has been this place of the meeting of land and water. Yet it is a world that keeps alive the sense of continuing creation and of the relentless drive of life. Each time I enter it, I gain some new awareness of its beauty and its deeper meanings, sensing that intricate fabric of life by which one creature is linked with another, and each with its surroundings.”
–Rachel Carson (American Biologist and Writer, 1907-1964)
The True Nature of Things
“The Sioux idea of living creatures is that trees, buffalo and man are temporary energy swirls, turbulent patterns. You find that perception registered so many ways in archaic and primitive lore. I say that it is probably the most basic insight into the nature of things, and that our more common, recent Occidental view of the universe as consisting of fixed things is out of the main stream, a deviation from basic human perception.”
–Gary Snyder (American Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet, 1930-)
The Web of Life
“Working with every conceivable kind of insect and animal from the protozoa upward, biologists have discovered a world of wondrously vast and orderly linkages and feedback loops between our environment and all organisms.”
–David Loye (American Psychologist, Evolutionary Systems Theorist and Author, 1925-)
“The Sphinx and the Rainbow: Brain, Mind, and Future Vision” (David Loye)
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“Many people feel that in the contemplation of nature and in communication with other living things, they become aware of some kind of force, or something, behind this apparent mask which we see in front of us, and they call it God.”
–Roman Kroitor (Canadian Filmmaker and Co-Inventor of IMAX, 1926-)
