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Welcome! This is a place to share how we celebrate & deepen our relationship to Nature. Here you will find stories, images, & ideas about wilderness, human nature, & soulfulness. Drawing from the experiences of everyday living, the topics on this blog include: forays into the natural world, the writing life, community service, meditation, creativity, grief & loss, inspiration, & whatever else emerges from these. I invite you on this exploration of the wild within & outside of us: the inner/outer landscape.



Friday, April 16, 2021

Celebrate Your Nature

You are nature. I mean that with all kindness and compassion. But I also mean it very, very earnestly.

 

Sometimes we forget that… 

 

every breath.

every hunger-pang-nourished-with-a-bite.

every cozy-ensconcing-in-our-warm-homes.

 

…is a step back into true memory.

 

We are nature. We cannot exist without it. We cannot deny it. We are still and abidingly nature.

 

This year for Earth Day (April 22nd), what at-least-small effort can you make to honor the good memory of your fleshy.skinned.salty-ocean-tears.skeleton and undeniable nature, the fullness of who we are as humans?

 

skip the shower, or turn off the water while soaping up, or cut the length of it

write a love letter, or poem, or story, or reverie about nature, a tree, oceans, mud pies

eat only vegetables or avoid processed foods

buy nothing at all for a day or a week

plant a sapling

write an email to local politicians about an environmental issue of concern 

eat dinner by candlelight

make a resolution (committed practice) on behalf of Earth

contribute cash to, or volunteer with, or make phone calls on behalf of a local nature org 

pick up garbage outdoors

create something beautiful with found objects

listen to birdsong

watch the sunrise or sunset

learn what “environmental justice” means

meditate with your breath as the touchstone, or pray

make a gratitude list on the back side of a used envelope

use a handkerchief instead of a paper tissue

take a photograph of something pretty or disturbing in the natural world

sit on the grass, in the crook of a limb, in the broad sunlight, on a river rock and allow total relaxation to be the salve that heals something within you

 

There are infinite ways to celebrate your nature. How will you do so today, and on Earth Day? 

Better yet, how will you do so every day?




All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2021 Jennifer J. Wilhoit/TEALarbor stories. All Rights Reserved."