While extended solitude does lead to a sense of inspired ease with our individual mind, it also leads us paradoxically into a deeper comprehension of our essential interconnection with other humans and the beyond-human world. We look around us at the trees, the birds, the flowers, the foxes and find they are not “other” at all.

It is useful to think of it this way: as the particular grace that is ours to give freely, with devotion, with service, with joy, though not without hardship.

When I am not writing outdoors, I sit at a desk piled with stones, shells, plants, fir cones, and the fragrance of cedar essential oil wafting in the air. Yet there is a slippery slope where easily accessed “nature-derived stimuli,” can come to replace our necessary attentiveness to living nature.

I believe that it is also important to claim wildness as a state of mind and a way of being.

Our work is to allow this passion to affect our existence, to let the inner ecology of our lives come to touch the outer ecology of the earth.

some other-than-normal but beautiful practices for bringing reciprocity to the trees among us and the forests they create.

There is an innate connection between the soles of our feet and the soil that brings recognition, enlivened spirits, and unexpected joy.

As perilous and complex as these times are, we are armed with a rare trio of tools that offers a rooted way forward: the joining of nature, spirit, and a uniquely modern science.

Hildegard counseled, “To be alive is to give praise.”