Nature is what we know --
Yet have no art to say --
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.
When I read these words of Emily Dickinson, I can't help but recall Wendell Berry's reflection on nature and its capacity to refresh us and rejuvenate us. An escape from the chaotic noise of our "connected" world is right through the door - outside, in the presence of "wild things" that we'll never fully understand.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world and am free.