nature

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.

Look 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.

Shared 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…

How 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.

Personal Rigs for Pleasure, Illumination, Escape

The other day in Central Park, I saw I guy lying in a hammock under the sweeping branch of an ancient tree. Nearby was heavy-duty dolly that he’d used to haul a hammock stand to the beautiful spot.
It got me thinking about personal rigs people devise for getting OUT unfettered by any ideas of embarrassment or propriety.

Derek Jarman’s Gardens: ” a Testament, Blazing, Blatant, to Possibility”.

After being diagnosed with AIDS in 1986, filmmaker Derek Jarman bought an austere tar-painted fisherman’s cottage in sight of a nuclear power station in the bleak shingle landscape on the southeast coast of England. It would prove to be an act of creative vision as unique as those Jarman realized in his films.

Firefly Season Arrives After a Hard Year, with Haiku

Seeing a single firefly in a field in New York City sparked several haiku, and coincided with astonishing research on the magical insect.

Meditative Retreats Among the Bees via Erika Thompson and Pablo Neruda

Texas Beeworks‘ Erika Thompson’s videos have become a sensation, documenting her adventures calmly moving whole colonies of bees out of hives that that have formed in the midst of people’s lives: under a pool umbrella, in a patio chair, an old tire, a water meter, compost bin, the walls of a house. They are mesmerizing to watch as much for the view into the workings of wild hives as for Thompson’s relaxed, fearless self-assurance.

Hot Weather Joy: Communal Water Music (Hermeto Pasoal, Vanuatu Women, Stephen Nachmanovitch, )

Listening to the water music of women from the northern Vanuatu and Brazilian musician Hermeto Pascoal takes us into the realm of joy, and gives us ideas for our own hot weather revelry. Steven Nachmanovitch, tells us how to access our own inner music…

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