“Over the past eight years, as part of a global storytelling project called the Out of Eden Walk, I have been hiking continents emptied of their wildlife by human beings. The Gaoligong represent a chance for solace. They are one of the planet’s last remaining vaults of biodiversity: a glimpse into a teeming Earth that once […]
“We’ve reached a time in human history when our global environmental crisis requires that we make permanent life-style changes. More than ever before, we need to fall back in love with the land. Silence is our meeting place.” – Gordon Hempton Gordon Hempton, and acoustic ecologist warns that silence, true silence, where man-made noise does […]
“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying […]
“It’s in the home or urban garden, where the effort you put into your soil can not only be felt in your hands and back, but also be tasted on the plate.”– Matthew Evans The sky above me is cloudless, and although there is still frost on the ground, the sun holds a promise of […]
“We’ve all been given a gift, the gift of life. What we do with our lives is our gift back.” – Edo When Matthias contacted me nearly two weeks ago to check if I’m up for a day of harvesting table olives on a local organic farm, I jumped at the opportunity. Not only did […]
“. . . belonging is not a once-and-for-all condition, a static identity tattooed on our skin; it is a constant self-examination and dynamic revision of where we are, who we are, and where we want to be.” – Elif Shafak I don’t like roller coasters, and I don’t like cliches, yet I can find no […]
“Happiness is that glorious feeling when everything seems right. When all of life’s twists and turns and jagged edges seem to fit together perfectly. In those often all-too-brief flickers of genuine happiness, every thought in your head is agreeable, and you wouldn’t mind if time stood still and the present moment extended forever.” – Mo […]
“Petrichor, the wonderful, soul-lifting smell you get after rain on earth, is thanks in large part to the metabolites of soil life. To geosmin. We’ve evolved around living earth, and our ability to sense geosmin could well explain why it feels so invigorating being in a garden, or so life-affirming to visit an ancient forest, […]
“Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.” – Michael Jordan Between the realisation that the heating system being installed wasn’t going to do what we thought it would (unless we spend […]
“. . . the degree of our awareness is the degree of our aliveness. What is invisible to me is what I have not yet learned how to see. The invisible becomes visible through our attention, through stillness, through silence. And patience.” – Terry Tempest Williams November was filled with a bounty of mushrooms and […]
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