Eloquently said. Finding inner peace is essential before we can align with our moral compass, develop effective coping strategies, and find a way forward. Nature is the best place to find peace because we sense we are part of a greater whole. For me, there is no way to feel peace when sitting on a rock on the moon or at the bottom of the ocean. Drifting on the sea's surface, observing marine life with a snorkel and mask, is a peaceful experience. In urban areas, we find peace in green spaces, the more natural the better. Sometimes it is a lone tree spreading its branches wide. In nature, we are so small, and it all is so grand. We take peace, stow it away inside to get through the day, and look forward to finding it again—wage peace.
Beautiful, Rob. So much to respond to, but I'll just say this. Having spent some solid time in the middle of Antarctica as a mote between ice and sky, I can say that it's an exquisite and otherworldly kind of peace. I've often referred to it as the nature behind nature, more meditative plane than landscape. I loved it, but it's the kind of antibiotic silence and emptiness that can kill you, and it's no place to live.
As you say, it's the multidimensional ebullience of life that sponsors the peace we feel most keenly. The ongoing erasure of life in this era is expanding the wrong kind of silence, an impoverished stillness.
Thanks, Jason. I appreciate your words. It's interesting what you say about your experience in Antarctica. I sense that beneath the peace of living nature is something ambient to the physical as well, something fundamental to existence. As you say, "the nature behind nature." Perhaps one day it will be so for us too.
Maybe much of what I loved in that icescape was the awe in the presence of absence. Hard to say, bc it's bound up with the astonishing physical aesthetics and the constant light, etc.
Just a moment ago, reading the Emergence interview with Robert Macfarlane about his new river book, the interviewer quotes Tacitus: "They created a desolation and called it peace.” (https://emergencemagazine.org/conversation/is-a-river-alive/)
Eloquently said. Finding inner peace is essential before we can align with our moral compass, develop effective coping strategies, and find a way forward. Nature is the best place to find peace because we sense we are part of a greater whole. For me, there is no way to feel peace when sitting on a rock on the moon or at the bottom of the ocean. Drifting on the sea's surface, observing marine life with a snorkel and mask, is a peaceful experience. In urban areas, we find peace in green spaces, the more natural the better. Sometimes it is a lone tree spreading its branches wide. In nature, we are so small, and it all is so grand. We take peace, stow it away inside to get through the day, and look forward to finding it again—wage peace.
Thanks, Rob. Eloquently said as well. I like "wage peace." I had forgotten that saying. Time to resurrect it.
Beautiful, Rob. So much to respond to, but I'll just say this. Having spent some solid time in the middle of Antarctica as a mote between ice and sky, I can say that it's an exquisite and otherworldly kind of peace. I've often referred to it as the nature behind nature, more meditative plane than landscape. I loved it, but it's the kind of antibiotic silence and emptiness that can kill you, and it's no place to live.
As you say, it's the multidimensional ebullience of life that sponsors the peace we feel most keenly. The ongoing erasure of life in this era is expanding the wrong kind of silence, an impoverished stillness.
Thanks for a great essay and poem.
Thanks, Jason. I appreciate your words. It's interesting what you say about your experience in Antarctica. I sense that beneath the peace of living nature is something ambient to the physical as well, something fundamental to existence. As you say, "the nature behind nature." Perhaps one day it will be so for us too.
Maybe much of what I loved in that icescape was the awe in the presence of absence. Hard to say, bc it's bound up with the astonishing physical aesthetics and the constant light, etc.
Just a moment ago, reading the Emergence interview with Robert Macfarlane about his new river book, the interviewer quotes Tacitus: "They created a desolation and called it peace.” (https://emergencemagazine.org/conversation/is-a-river-alive/)
The peace of watching magpies forage in the grass at dusk.