Get into the Wild

“If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.”  

- Wallace Stegner

People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. Nature teaches us respect and pushes us out of a concentration on our egos.

Barbara Kingsolver reminds us, "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 our economic status or our running day calendar. Wildness puts us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd.”

Take a walk and observe nature as it swirls around you. Can you name the trees and flowers you pass?  

Listen for birdsong and count the varieties of birds in flight.  

Smell the aromas that mingle on the breeze. 

Crush a leaf and breathe its fragrance.  

Dip your nose into a rose.

Where do you fit?  

Consider your own sense of place from different perspectives.