Nature's Connections

As post-Romantic subjects, we have become used to defining our identities apart from the everyday, through various forms of leisure and imaginative escape. Our idea of nature, like art, has helped to enable such forms of self-definition. To embrace an everyday nature means shifting also how we define our selves, no longer through forms of imaginative escape of transcendence but though our ordinary lives, work, actions and relationships.   
- Scott Hess “Imagining an Everyday Nature” from ISLE Winter 2010.

During my morning run, flowers explode from nooks and around corners. Birdsong chases me as mockingbirds, crows, house sparrows, seagulls, and cormorants enchant the breeze.

I watch others pass in cars and on foot and wonder how many can name the trees, flowers, or bushes in their neighborhood?

Do they take them for granted along with the birds and insects as they swerve out of driveways, talking on cell phones? 

When they return home, will the television and computer screen push them away from a natural environmental influence?

Take time to slow down and redirect attention to our place in the web of nature around us beyond the technology that defines our lives.

Enjoy a stroll and marvel.  

Watch early spring explode and put on a show for the benefit of everyone.

Use your eyes, nose, and fingers to explore the magic of seeds into blossoms.

Listen and identify the birds in your garden.

Be grateful for ways nature balances and shows you how.

Find ways to connect and identify with everyday nature.