loving 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.

An Interview with Anne Benvenuti about Spirit Unleashed

The approach that I took to writing about human-animal relations is as important to me as the topic itself. I wanted to write a beautiful book, and a book that was what I call “integral.” That means approaching the topic from several academic disciplines, but also with emotion integrated into the thinking process, rather than continuing with the false assumption that feeling clouds rationality. Thinking and feeling are both necessary to correct understanding of the world and ourselves in the world, and so are necessary to living well. I wanted to think clearly and I wanted to feel clearly, and to have these two work together to produce something beautiful.

Dawn Chorus (Other Nations)

This morning I saw that the Acorn Woodpeckers are well into harvest season, with or without cooler temperatures. One crew was drilling out their barns and tossing out last year’s detritus while another crew was hauling in large acorns to stuff into those clean barns: knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. I send them a Woody Woodpecker good morning. They glance briefly in my direction, like people everywhere who are focused on a task. “Mmmhmm,” they say, “I’m busy right now.”

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