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Lion

For fifteen years I hadn’t seen a mountain lion, and then I’d dreamed of a big cat and seen one within a six-week period. The synchronicity brought my inner and outer worlds together with such force it left me tingling for hours. All day long, I turned over and over in my mind the image of the cat, the memory of my dream, and the resonance between the two. I felt certain that this mountain lion had come to make real the image in the dream, to bring the symbol to life.

Huckleberry Summer

All day long we would pick, seeing places we would never have seen had our mission not drawn us out of our daily routines. We filled cottage-cheese containers and old ice-cream buckets and coffee cans, and we poured them into the bigger containers in the back of the red 1965 Volkswagen that we’d all crammed into for the trip. We drank water straight from cold streams. We ate berries by the handful. We studied squirrels and chipmunks. We ran across deer.

Coyote Genesis

When Nature Speaks

An Interview With Jim Nollman

But, once in a blue moon, we communicate with the whales in such a meaningful manner that I experience a sense of grace. That’s what communication with nonhumans is really all about. When that communication happens, no matter how subtle it is, whether or not it registers on tape or film, I feel as if I’ve been blessed. It is the greatest blessing of my life, and, in some way, it is the same experience that I see lying at the heart of religion.

The Wilderness Within

During aimless wanderings in the woods, while on the verge of becoming lost, I have often wondered what we mean by the word wilderness.

Snowing Inside Me

The Air Around Me Was Hissing

I was nineteen and living with three other girls in a big house sandwiched between a linseed-oil factory and a pesticide plant. Two of the girls were nuts, and the smell of linseed oil gave me headaches.

The Technology Of Simplicity

When I was eleven or twelve, I used to go deer hunting with my father. He would wake me before dawn on cold, crisp October days, and we would dress silently in the dim glow of a night light, not wanting to awaken the rest of the house.

Beautiful To Us

Sunbeams

And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed.

Genesis 2:25