On my walk this afternoon, I listened to the thawing landscape. Lambs cried and water babbled along drainage canals, while the birds that survived the snowfall sang their tiny hearts out. Along the way I saluted the genius loci of this countryside, its local guardians: a massive, sinewy-armed tree, weird steeples of moss and lichen, Benbo mountain. Step by step, I worshipped the land, the journey my kinetic prayer.

//

"The naturalist's spirituality is one with no icons (unlike religion's), and it is also one that enforces no particular morality. In fact, for many it is not much more than the residue of awe which modern life has not (yet) erased, a sensitivity to the realms of life which are not yet corralled by dogma."--Barry Lopez, "The Naturalist"




<<