nature Archives - Improvised Life

Life as Desire Path, and Listening

Although we’ve walked many, and have made a few ourselves, we only recently heard the expression “desire paths” to describe unplanned trails created by human desire. It got us thinking about about what is really at play in their making…

A Lenape Meditation on Seeds

As we were leaving our local library, an unassuming looking book on display jumped into our hands: Lenapehoking: An Anthology, a reference to the the native American Lenape homeland on which our own home — all of New York City — is built. In it, we found this remarkable passage on seeds…

Issa’s Essential Message on Being Alive Beneath Blossoms…

At the end of cherry blossom season, as the petals were falling to the ground like pink snow, we found the perfect haiku written 300 years ago by the great poet Issa. We found the gist applies to way more than cherry blossom season…

How a Wild Snail Kindled Unexpected Possibilities When All Seemed Lost

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.

The 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…

Wendell 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.

Nature’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…

Lesson 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.

Alex 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.

Alan 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.

Escaping 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.

‘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.

Objects 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.

Tree 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.

Churches 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”…

Illuminating 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.

Imagining 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…

An 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)

Tree 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.

2 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.

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