‘Every time I meet a tree, if I am truly awake, I stand in awe before it. I listen to its voice, a silent sermon moving me to the depths, touching my heart, and stirring up within my soul a yearning to give my all.’
~ Mary Webb
Image: Live Oak
by Nancy Lankston
“There is one masterpiece, the hexagonal cell, that touches perfection. No living creature, not even human, has achieved, in the centre of one’s sphere, what the bee has achieved on her own: and if intelligence from another world were to descend and ask of the earth the most perfect creation, I would offer the humble comb of honey.”
~Maurice Maeterlinck,
The Life Of The Bee, 1924
“You know why trees smell the way they do?” Murphy asked, looking up from her hammering.
“Sap?” Logan guessed. “Chlorophyll?”
Murphy shook her head. “Stars. Trees breathe in starlight year after year, and it goes deep into their bones. So when you cut a tree open, you smell a hundred years’ worth of light. Ancient starlight that took millions of years to reach earth. That’s why trees smell so beautiful and old.”
~Frances O’Roark Dowell
‘Where I’d Like To Be’
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Photo by Ryan Hutton on Unsplash
“When you have an intense contact of love with nature or another human being , like a spark , then you understand that there is no time and that everything is eternal …”
~Paul Coelho
Image by Nancy Lankston
“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”
~Joseph Campbell
All rivers flow in spirals. I was shocked when I learned this fact, and yet it instantly felt true to me. The reason for the spiraling motion has to do with the resistance to flow at the edges of the river where water meets solid land. Without resistance at its edges, the river would simply flow in a straight line down the “tube” defined by the riverbanks. Instead, the water continuously rolls and spirals over itself, changing in speed and direction depending on how close to the riverbank it finds itself.
The spiral, rolling movement is what makes every river meander from side to side like a snake writhing on the ground. Natural rivers always meander, cutting into one bank and shifting their direction back and forth over time. Only waterways altered by man flow in straight lines – and then only for a little while. Water continues to spiral even in manmade waterways; it continuously fights against the linear path laid out for it.
There are no straight lines in nature. Human bones also grow in spirals, as do tree limbs unfurling out from the trunk. Why? Because tissue is primarily fluid at its growing edge. This is the water planet. All natural growth is fluid — flowing, spiraling fluid.
Break the rule of the spiral and you end up with the mess of hideous canals and failing dykes that now fight against the spiral will of the mighty Mississippi River. Even today, the waters of the river fight to flow and meander their way to the Gulf of Mexico. It is their nature.
What does it say about humans when we keep trying to straighten a river’s flow? What does it say about us when we fight against the innate nature of the river?
Can we learn to listen to the spiraling waters? Can we become more fluid ourselves and stop forcing the waters into a straightened path? Can we relax and flow again? What might we learn if we watched and listened to the wisdom of the river?
~Nancy Lankston
And if today we speak at all,
let us speak in golden leaf.
Let’s converse in low clear stream,
whisper in rose-hip pink.
And if we speak at all today,
let’s slip mulch between each word,
aware that what we say will grow—
how powerful the words we sow.
And if we speak at all,
let’s speak in mountain, speak in field,
speak only words that lift and heal,
speak only words that lift and heal.
And if we speak,
let’s listen for the quiet in between—
plant tulips bulbs in the silences.
And crocuses. And grace.
And any words with thorns in them,
let’s set them down. Let’s lose them.
And if our words don’t open like sky,
let’s let the sky say everything.
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Image: Aspens at Sunset
by Nancy Lankston