love of nature — blog — Anne Benvenuti

Back to Eden

Last summer, I spent some days in Kirkby Stephen in northern England, a town whose unlikely mascot is the South American macaw, a type of parrot whose facial feather pattern is unique and identifiable on sight by other macaws. Perhaps macaw faces are easily seen by the humans who love them too, like John Strutt who once owned the nearby Eden Farm, and who endowed his farm as a nature sanctuary and permanent home for feral macaws. Today's macaws roam by day and return freely to their open aviaries at night.

It's Natural to Love Nature

I was recently asked to speak at the Religions for the Earth Conference on the topic “Outdoor Epiphanies,” an expression that might well summarize the meaning of my life. As John Muir famously said, “I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”

To begin with, I want to state a scientific fact: all behavior is motivated by emotions. Or, in ordinary folk language, we are moved to action by the feeling of our hearts, not the thoughts in our minds.

Why the New Archaic?

I use these two words of seemingly mutual contradiction to signify a complex reality, that now we are in not just a “postmodern” era but a post-cultural era, and so the “new” that was once human culture is old and worn, and the archaic that is elemental nature is newly necessary and newly beautiful. Further, I think the challenge for this time of great change is to make a new human culture that incorporates consciously and wholeheartedly the archaic and elemental into the sanctuaries of our lives.

Winter Solstice: Being Still

Let me say exactly what I mean for today, for the winter solstice: even the sun rests, the dogs rest, and we need to rest too. I may be a special case of mania, but I don't really think so. Almost everyone I know, even the very young and the very old need to rest more than they do, and I wish we could rest guilt free, I wish we could celebrate rest. (Remember John and Yoko’s sleep-In?)

In honor of the winter solstice, the doorway of the Quiet Season, I invite you not to take my advice, but to listen to your own body, to observe the Sun in its moment of stillness, to lie down and let some beautiful music wash over you. T

John Muir Trail Talk. . . Disillusionment

OK, the experience of backpacking the John Muir Trail was not what I imagined at all; it was much less glorious, much less mystical, much less aware and attuned to nature. I’d say “no grapenuts” but there was an abundance of them! Generally, I was not in harmony with the world around me, but focused on many necessities of “through walking.” We had to make a certain number of miles per day because our food supplies were calculated to last so long and no longer. We had to eat more breakfast than I like, and I learned I had to eat less lunch than we’d calculated because my body didn’t like walking and digesting at the same time of a Sierra afternoon. I was very hungry by dinner, and even hungrier as the number of days out lengthened.

Anne BenvenutiDecember 11, 2010John Muir Trail, love of nature, loving nature, awareness of nature, wilderness awarenessComment

John Muir Trail Talk. . .

First and most importantly, the reader must keep in mind the fundamental facts: mountains are essentially, up, down, and dirty, as well as solid and soaring.

On July 19, I set out with my longtime friend, Diane, the only person in whose company I can imagine attempting to carry 45 pounds up and down mountains ranging from 9,000 to 12,000 feet in elevation, for 137 and a half (who’s counting) miles, over 21 days. Essentially, we did what we set out to do, pretty much in the way we intended to do it, rerouting once because we had taken a wrong turn, backtracking another time when we missed a trail sign, and changing course for the last three days to come out at North Lake by way of Piute Pass, instead of South Lake by way of Bishop Pass.

Anne BenvenutiNovember 28, 2010John Muir Trail, Big Agnes, Agra, Taj Mahal, love of nature, awareness of natureComment

The New Archaic

In these pages, as I add to them, you will find evidence of things I am passionate about: scholarship and wonderings about the big ideas and unarticulated assumptions that underlie our everyday thinking and decisions; beauty, the natural world (especially animals), the spiritual realm of human life. . . .