On love, wine, and being a naturalist
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American naturalist and essayist John Burroughs once wrote:
“A sense of the power and mystery of Nature shall spring up as fully in one’s heart after he has made the circuit of his own field as after returning from a voyage ’round the world.”
That statement sure rings true with me. I can hike the same trail over and over again in different seasons or in the same, and still I find that I cannot divorce myself from that sense of wonder that I used to know as a kid. I still want to get belly down on the ground sometimes just to marvel at the life going on within a square foot of space.
I hope I never lose this sense of awe, this inspired revelation, this connection to our world’s intricate graces, this true love.
And so I endeavor to keep on learning, exploring, taking my world into deeper realms of understanding, connection, and reconnection. Whether it’s that tongue-brain connection that tells me why I like a wine and not just that I like it, or whether it’s being able to observe and uncover the relationships between rock, tree, cloud, vine, flower, bird and insect, I continually want to know more about this relationship between me and my earth, us and our earth. I feel it strongly, viscerally. I feel it because I choose to live in the present, this moment on the trail, right now.
I want others to share this, too: the desire to find the beauty, curiosity, wisdom, and strength from this natural world that surrounds us, supports us, and waits for us to accept it, acquiesce to it, embrace it. And therefore I want to teach others to watch, listen, observe, and feel Nature. Indeed, we can all gain strength from feeling Nature’s continuity, diversity, magnitude, and intelligence which are all around us every day.
We just have to choose to feel.
It is for these reasons that my love affair with the natural world is very much like a love affair with wine.
February 16th, 2007 00:32
>”I hope I never lose this sense of awe,…”
Yes me too.
February 25th, 2007 21:39
Beautiful post!