Quotes About Nature

What would it be like, I wondered, to live with that heightened sensitivity to the lives given for ours? To consider the tree in the Kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread of life in everything and pay it respect?

To become naturalized is to live as if your children's future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.

But I think we are called to go beyond cultures of gratitude, to once again become cultures of reciprocity.

We spill over into the world and the world spills over into us.

Midway between land and water, freshwater marshes are among the most highly productive ecosystems on earth, rivaling the tropical rainforest.

Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them self and intention and compassion---until we teach them not to.

The combination of circumstances which allows it to exist at all are so implausible that Schistostega is rendered much more precious than gold.... It's life, and ours, exist only because of a myriad of synchronicities that bring us to this particular place at this particular moment. In return for such a gift, the only sane response is to glitter in reply.

What would it be like to be raised on gratitude, to speak to the natural world as a member of the democracy of species, to raise a pledge of interdependence? No declarations of political loyalty are required, just a response to a repeated question: "Can we agree to be grateful for all that is given?

If there is meaning in the past and in the imagined future, it is captured in the moment. When you have all the time in the world, you can spend it, not on going somewhere, but on being where you are. So I stretch out, close my eyes, and listen to the rain.

This is our work, to discover what we can give. Isn't this the purpose of education, to learn the nature of your own gifts and how to use them for good in the world?

How, in our modern world, can we find our way to understand the earth as a gift again, to make our relations with the world sacred again?

Names are the way we humans build relationship, not only with each other but with the living world.

It is understood that these gifts have a dual nature, though: a gift is also a responsibility.

Time can vanish in exploring these places, like wandering through an art gallery of unexpected forms and colors. Sometimes, I look up from my microscope at the end of an hour, and I'm taken aback at the plainness of the ordinary world, the drab and predictable shapes.

The edge of a leaf is not simply uneven; there is a glossary of specific words for the appearance of a leaf margin: dentate for large, coarse teeth, serrate for a sawblade edge, serrulate if the teeth are fine and even, ciliate for a fringe along the edge. A leaf folded by accordion pleats is plicate, complanate when flattened as if squashed between two pages of a book. Every nuance of moss architecture has a word.

The creek that was once a fishery for Atlantic salmon, a swimming hole for kids, and a focal point of community life now runs as brown as chocolate milk. Allied Chemical and its successors deny any role in the formation of the mudboils. They claim it was an act of God. What kind of God would that be?

To destroy a wild thing for pride seems a potent act of domination.

This is the fundamental nature of gifts: they move, and their value increases with their passage. The fields made a gift of berries to us and we made a gift of them to our father. The more something is shared, the greater its value becomes.

Biologists may make unsuitable dinner conversation, but we are seldom bored.

Gifts from the earth or from each other establish a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, and to reciprocate.

It is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.

we all live downstream

They live both above and below ground, joining Skyworld to the earth. Plants know how to make food from light and water, and then they give it away. I like to imagine that when Skywoman scattered her handful of seeds across Turtle Island, she was sowing sustenance for the body and also for the mind, emotion, and spirit: she was leaving us teachers. The plants can tell us her story; we need to learn to listen.

Mosses are so little known by the general public that only a few have been given common names. Most are known solely by their scientific Latin names, a fact which discourages most people from attempting to identify them. But I like the scientific names, because they are as beautiful and intricate as the plants they name. Indulge yourself in the words, rhythmic and musical, rolling off your tongue: Dolicathecia striatella, Thuidium delicatulum, Barbula fallax.