Nature. What do you think of when you hear that word? What is Nature to you?
For me it evokes fresh air, trees, mountains, and a feeling of not being bounded by human concerns. Life, and freedom.
“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” -John Muir
We have to leave the outside of our homes and go inside nature now and then, to remember who and what we are. Yes, it's easy to idealize nature in literature, photographs and dreams, but what nature really does is remind us that not everything is under our control, and that's a reassuring thought.
Do you have a favourite book that reminds you of what it's like to be out (in) nature?
What book do you like to curl up on the sofa with take outside to read while sitting on a moss-covered rock beside a swift-flowing stream in a forest of sweet-smelling cedars, with a gentle wind carrying the bugs away? Mine is The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien, whose love of nature is evident through his descriptions of the lands of Middle-earth, which are really our own lands. The power of his prose is never lessened by an interpretive or preachy word; he doesn't have to tell us nature is great - we feel it for ourselves through the eyes of the adventurers.
River rapids on the road between Port Alberni and Ucluelet. A nice place to roam on a rainy day. So much of British Columbia is represented in this one picture: misty trees, water, rock and rain.