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.
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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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The very best words on rain we’ve read are from American hermit, mystic, priest, Thomas Merton. He wrote it one rainy night in his hermitage at the Abby of Gethsemeni in Kentucky. It has shown us rain in a new way…
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We have marveled at Susan Simard since we realized she was the model for the fearless, hermetic tree botanist in Richard Price’s wondrous tree-centric novel The Overstory. Her new book Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Ancient Wisdom of the Forest about the intricate underground communication network trees create and depend upon got us thinking about the perfect gift, for Mother’s day or otherwise.
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One morning, I found myself listening to poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge reading Wonder from her book A Treatise on Stars. I was transfixed, calmed, transported by her voice and the story it told. It proved a surprising lesson in seeing stars, and the connection between wonder and not knowing.
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In this lovely (refreshing) short film, Laura Owen Sanderson describes how she found healing from a dire illness through wild swimming. For her, the process was a kind of rewilding…
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We feel like we’re flying ourselves as we watch these sea lions leaping and flying through the waves in pure fluid JOY.
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The past week working at our desk, we listened to soundscapes of forests in Malaysia, Estonia, Portugal, China and France… Through a remarkable website, we found ourselves transported into tranquil environments AND quickly able to gift trees to friends…
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Over 9 years at dawn, Cosmo Sheldrake carried recording gear, laptop, and sometimes a keybord into fields and woods to make music in collaboration endangered birds. The result is his new album Wake Up Calls; it is both charming and illuminating…
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Ferris Jabr’s deeply-pleasurable “The Social Life of Forests” tells the story of scientist Susan Simard whose pioneering research changed the way we think about the fundamental nature of forests: as complex deeply-connected networks that allow trees to communicate and cooperate. It offers a powerful lesson for this time of pandemic.
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In this video, performance artist Marina Abramovic describes the tree therapy she developed many years ago in the Amazon rainforest. It has become part of her “Abramović Method,
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A therapist friend once described the idea of reverie as a tool for healing; dreamy meditation and daydreaming, free of anxious thinking, has a powerfully restful effect. That state is what I found myself in after I stumbled on these tiny videos…
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We take a walk daily because it never fails to refresh our thinking, change our view of things, calm us. Especially, in these most stressful times. It is perhaps our most powerful medicine. Walking, we find our mind shifting, ideas sparking, problems beginning to yield in ways we never expect. Rilke nailed it in A Walk:…
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Some remarkable writings and images describing intimate encounters with trees got us thinking about what really happens when we sit inside one, climb one, sit in its embrace…
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Fueled by a quarantine fantasy of hiking the Appalachian Trail, S.B. Dworski’s path took her into unexpected territory…
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I came to loving poetry late in life when I realized what was happening when I read a great one. It was just as Emily Dickinson described… subversive words with the power of a drug…
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After a particularly rough period of her life, artist and gardener Lorene Edwards Forkner embarked on an unusual daily practice, that quietly taught her some very big lessons.
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Boxlapse Films’ timelapses of seeds bursting through the soil are so wildly expressive, we found ourselves watching with a big grin on our face at the life force in action. It called to mind botanist Hope Jahren’s description of what seeds really do, and Mary Oliver on the very thing to dispel anxiety…
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This morning we came across extraordinary words from Carl Jung. They describe a wholeness of experience that antidotes the very modern idea that we are each self-contained. Soon after, a Mary Oliver poem echoed it…
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Recently, the actual living trees that were the subject of van Gogh’s last painting in 1890 were discovered near the small French town where he lived. A photograph of the trees superimposed with the painting brings to life Gary Snyder’s idea of “tree intensity of mind”, and amplifies our own experience mightily.
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