Forced by a virus to endure a long convalescence in bed, it was impossible for Elisabeth Tova Bailey to imagine a future; “All of life was out of reach.” Only it wasn’t. A forest snail that took up residence on her nightstand, living in a pot of violets, would change her life and become the impetus for a remarkable book.
Read MoreThe Power of Pine Trees Dreaming (Xmas Card)
We’ve stumbled on a few things recently that mightily deepened our view of the Christmas trees that are everywhere now, including a remarkable video of the birth of a pine tree and haiku written hundreds of years ago: Our improvised holiday card to you…
Read MoreWendell Berry’s Reminder
When I heard Wendell Berry reading his poem “How to Be a Poet”, I thought: that’s exactly what I’ve been doing to heal myself of the strange illness I’ve been dealing with.
Read MoreNature’s Operating Manual
In her seminal 1997 book Biomimicry, Janine Benyus introduced the notion that we could be better off by simply mimicking the ways problems are solved in nature. Although usually formatted as a numbered list, we saw them for the first time as a single sentence, set up like a poem. And like a good poem, it makes for a radical shift of view…
Read MoreLesson in Perception from the Largest Living Being on Earth*
We recently learned about Pando, a clonal aspen tree that is one of the largest and oldest beings on earth. Over 100 acres wide, it has been hiding in plain sight for thousands of years. It is a lesson in how we see, and don’t.
Read MoreAlex Katz Flings Us Into The Immediate Present
We recently returned to the Guggenheim Museum with a singular purpose: to revisit the handful of remarkable late paintings artist Alex Katz made of trees, lake, night. Those are really not the subject. He paints the sensation of seeing.
Read MoreAlan Watts Puts Us In Our Place
When a friend threw THIS over our transom, we felt instantly better. Clarifying, heartening, it pulled us out of our heads into just the right place.
Read MoreEscaping Prison Through The Natural World (Merete Mueller)
Blue Room is a beauty of a New York Times video editorial by filmmaker Merete Mueller. It shows incarcerated men and women watching nature videos on loop, in a mental health experiment to see how seeing nature impacts their experience of isolation and the relentlessly bleak environments in which they must live. Its quietly powerful 11 minutes took us way beyond its subject.
Read More‘Trees are Sanctuaries’: Hermann Hesse’s Writing and Watercolors
A snippet of a Hermann Hesse quote about trees sent us hunting for the whole thing. We stumbled on “Trees: An Anthology of Writings and Paintings”, a little gem of a book: thirty of Hesse’s watercolors with his essays and poetry about trees, for him, a symbol of transcendence and rebirth.
Read MoreObjects of Wonder in a Simple Life (Walt Whitman)
The other morning, I opened the blind just as the rising sun was turning everything golden and a double rainbow appeared over Harlem. It got me thinking about the word “miracle” and another citing of miracles by a 6 year old I know. And Walt Whitman’s mighty list.
Read MoreTree Rooms Hiding in Plain Sight (Wendell Berry)
Designer Russel Wright had the habit of shaping parts of the land around Manitoga, his home and studio in upstate New York, into “rooms”. Rather than making a room, I love the idea of an outdoor room coming into being simply by finding it or naming it, as happened when I stumbled on some ancient Beeches. Their branches arch down to the ground to define the space around them, making quiet leafy rooms. The feeling of hanging out in them is extraordinary. Wendell Berry nailed it.
Read MoreChurches in Trees, Trees as Church
The image of a Serbian Orthodox church inside an oak tree got us thinking about trees being used as churches. What are the qualities of trees that make them a place for sanctuary, reflection, rest, prayer. We found the answer in Jo Shapcott’s glorious poem “I Go Inside the Tree”…
Read MoreIlluminating Ways to Think About Climate Change
Amid the daily deluge of bleak, enervating news about the effects of climate change, we’ve been noticing a strain of defiance: Messages that engender energy and activism rather than despair and paralysis. They offer a thought-provoking and heartening view.
Read MoreImagining a Forest Bed with a Poem by Mary Oliver
When we saw this image on @UpstateDiary, we thought what a lovely thing to build into a garden, and imagined ourselves resting on it, how instantly relaxed and at ease we would feel in the fragrant green. Then this Mary Oliver poem jumped into our hands, expanding its possibilities…
Read MoreAn Ad Hoc Indoor Pond for Spring Blossoms (Su Tung Po)
Blossoms knocked off their stems make for free flower arrangements in the form of ad hoc indoor ponds like the one photographer Maria Robledo devised (the perfect accompaniment to this poem written over a thousand years ago)
Read MoreTree Benediction (Mary Oliver)
Lately Mary Oliver has been coming again into our field of vision. This perfect evocation of being among trees is a balm in this ferocious time.
Read More2 Minutes of Forest Therapy + Merwin’s ‘Thanks’
Over the years, we’ve found many ways to express thanks. Close to our heart is this W.S. Merwin poem that finds a way to say thanks in the midst of our beautiful, frightening, wounded, wounding world. We offer it with a big hunk of beauty from a Mexican forest.
Read MoreLook Up and Stars Will Shake the Everyday (Upstate Diary, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Neil deGrasse Tyson)
At the ever-illuminating @upstate_diary, we suddenly found ourselves looking up through wintry trees into a vast moving star-scape. It transported us to a chilly night in the country. It led to reminders of cosmic views of the everyday.
Read MoreShared Harmonics in Nature and Art Makes Us See in a New Way
Do you ever wonder why we humans tend to feel good in nature? Annie Murphy Paul’s scholarly The Extended Mind: the Power of Thinking Outside the Brain gives the simple, obvious gist. It’s message is surprisingly echoed in art…
Read MoreHow to See Miracles (Helen McDonald, Miles Davis)
I was stunned recently when the morning light slanted across the leaves in the low shrubs across from me to reveal glittering spider webs woven throughout: an intricate network of homes carefully, miraculously forged. It reminded me of a perfect passage from H is for Hawk, and what it takes to see.
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