Tag: Nature

• October 1, 2012

  On technology’s noises and nature’s silence

  At a pitstop en route to returning our rental car on Saturday, my love and I remarked that the automatic toilet flushers flushed before we were through. My manual flusher was also disconnected. I was thinking of these, perhaps, when I tried to get my weekend duffle–no large thing–into the plane’s overhead compartment and had…
• September 24, 2012

  ‘When you head into the country, it’s best to take your Thoreau along with you…’

  When you head into the country, it’s best to take your Thoreau along with you. Marilynne Robinson calls the West “lonesome” and means it to be a virtue. I want so much for life to be quiet and wind-spoken. Thinking sounds–comes and sounds–like this. Like wind speaking. We’ll be in the mountains for almost a…
• September 21, 2012

  On ‘urban supremicism’ and the end of opportunity cost

  I have been following Greek citizens’ response to the collapse of their economy and their likely exit from the Eurozone. Some, doing the hard work of their forbears, have returned to the land. Others, like Gregoris Skouros (see “As Economics of Everyday Life Erode, Some Greeks See Little Hope” [New York Times, Sept. 19, 2012]),…
• July 24, 2012

  On climbing and humility

  I put my head down after every climb, after I finish climbing. Chalking up shows reverence to the rock, the wind, the approaching sky. A tree grows out of the shoulder, sun-brushed. The Daoist philosopher, sitting in a treehouse, lives according to nature.
• July 19, 2012

  The transformation of the beautiful soul

  The beautiful soul is a person who exhibits beauty in his general appreciation of beauty. I asked my friend, the philosopher David E. Cooper, the following question: Is there an ‘education’ of the beautiful soul, a path one might follow in hopes of becoming one and, if so, what might this involve? In our conversation,…