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-)