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Plants
Living Medicine
Stephen Harrod Buhner On Plant Intelligence, Natural Healing, And The Trouble With Pharmaceuticals
When you use a living medicine and get well, you feel that the world is alive and aware and wants to help you. People often talk about saving the Earth, but how many times have you experienced the Earth saving you?
December 2014Bodies Of The Giants
I stayed two days close to the bodies of the giants, and there were no trippers, no chattering troupes with cameras. There’s a cathedral hush here. Perhaps the thick soft bark absorbs sound and creates a silence. The trees rise straight up to zenith; there is no horizon.
September 2014A Habit Of Ascent
Childhood, the first eternity, / as I wandered our vast acre, / trying to escape the sun.
March 2014Sunbeams
June 2013When we stand beneath the night sky, we stand beneath the history of the whole of creation. It is a miracle that so much of it is perceptible — a miracle we might appreciate more if it had not occurred and we did not have senses to discern it.
The Undiscovered Country
John Elder On The Wild Places Close To Home
But to find the sacred only in the wilderness would be like finding it only in a beautiful church on Easter. Unless the sacred is imbued in your day-to-day life, in your work, in the food on your table, in the attitude you take toward the health of your own community, its value is limited.
June 2013Family Tree
I watch my son high in the magnolia / where branches thin. His sister / at the foot of the tree shrieks for him / to come down and play with her.
January 2013Walk With Grand-Dog And Wallace Stevens
Sea gull quartering the wind. Heron along the shore, / then pinwheeling back, low to the water. Wind in poplar, / cedar, beech, and pine, each speaking in a different voice.
December 2012Brown Thrush
As I stepped into the screened-in breezeway between my house and garage, I heard the muffled sound of wings. Something swooped by my head and landed on the screen: a brown thrush. It had flown in through the open garage door and couldn’t find its way out.
December 2012After the e-mail saying you forgave me
It was about the time the first / poplar leaves turn yellow. / The cottonmouth, thick as a muscular arm, / slid into the water at my feet.
March 2012Conversations With A Tree
Every morning I’d have an audience with my tree. I always began by saying, “Namaskar,” which is Sanskrit for “I salute the divine within you with my entire mind and heart.” Standing before the tree, I’d hear words in my head that weren’t my own. I suspected the tree was actually speaking to me, and I began a journal of our conversations.
September 2011Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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