Quotes to Ponder

The landscape of one’s home is always sacramental. It molds our character and it’s the soil out of which we grow. It’s where we either encounter the divine or we never make the connection. -- Seamus Heaney

If you have no relationship with nature, you have no relationship with humanity. -- Krishnamurti

The upshot is that if we don’t connect to the landscape where we grew up, then we won’t be able to nurture relationships with others. We won’t believe in a higher power but think that we know what’s best for everything. And we won’t care about what happens to the environment and will regard trees as only wood for building houses and rivers as conduits for getting water to our homes and factories.

If we don’t connect to nature, then we will exploit the land, each other, and religion in order to make money. And when we die, we will be alone, depressed by the too-late realization of our limitations, and closed up in hermetically-sealed rooms.

Send your children outdoors to play before they become bitter.

Landscapes of Home - Seamus Heaney

There are many definitions for where home is. Typically people say it’s where you were born, or where you lived for more than a month, or where people have to take you in when you need help. For me, home is where I have a feel for the land. Seamus Heaney speaks of the importance of connecting to the land when we are young, otherwise we find it hard to do.

I grew up in the woods and on the lakes of Wisconsin, canoed in the Boundary Waters above Minnesota, sleeping on tiny islands, and lived in Edmonton, Alberta where summer lasted two weeks, but the winter snows were wonderfully deep and the aurora borealis spectacular. I also lived in the Bay Area and hiked on Mt. Tamalpais along the ocean, and now I help out on a farm in central Illinois. Each one is a place that I call home.