Nature...

What is it about nature that draws us so much? This is a question that I ask myself almost daily. Maybe it's because in nature we find something very similar to ourselves; something that is living, moving, striving to grow to its full potential. In nature we find the unpredictability that is so characteristic of life, and with that unpredictability a sense of newness, of fresh beginnings, of freedom. These are things that many times are completely opposed to the artificial world in which we live. In our artificial world that we have created, everything is lifeless. TVs, microwaves, toasters, computers, cell phones; these things can't grow, they can't improve. Yet these are the things that we now use--that we now RELY ON--to exist.

Humans were made from the earth, and so they belong with the earth. I think that being out in nature connects us to something greater and more transcendent than ourselves; to that Source of life from which all life stems, from each blade of grass to every human. By our very nature, I believe we long for nature, because it reveals to us a part of ourselves.

-Daniel