Laudate Deum: a cry of the heart
Fierce and blunt, caring and empathic, Laudate Deum is a cry from the heart of a man who cares deeply about Earth and all her manifestations.
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The California gold rush
I am a native of the northeastern United States, where spectacular fall color is the rule. After a few years of living in the profound all-year green of coastal northern California, I asked a friend where to go to find color. To the eastern Sierra Nevada, she said, so off we went. It was glorious. This yearly gold rush is a gift of many forces meeting — every one of them a wonder in itself.
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Taking wing: celebrating the Season of Creation
We evolved on a planet filled with winged creatures. Soaring above us, buzzing around us, filling our air, inspiring us. They pull our eyes and minds upward. Their colors dazzle us. Our ears have been attuned and our souls elated by their songs. They are messengers of life, industry, mortality, mystery.
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A season of butterfly lilies
The way Earth tosses beauty about fascinates me. She doesn’t save splendor only for grand vistas and awe-inspiring mysteries. She spreads it at our feet the minute we leave the pavement we are so attached to. She invites us to pay deep attention, often to the smallest of treasures. She strews exquisite mariposa lilies in the unlikeliest of places.
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Be astonished. Tell about it.
The ability to center ourselves among the beauties of this challenging, whirling world is one of the greatest gifts of Earth. This is not superficial beauty, as pleasant as that is, especially for flowers. This is the beauty lying deep in the heart of creation. Beauty as energy, generativity, as the endless cycle of life, death, rebirth. Beauty as the slow evolutionary dance of function and form. As healing, exaltation, and inspiration.
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I have located heaven
It turns out that heaven is relatively easy to find, just into Canada north of the Montana border. At the end of a beautiful drive through the prairies of southwestern Alberta, you arrive at the gates. Not pearly, as one was led to expect. Instead, the rather odd Tudor/rustic combination favored by Parks Canada. This
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Gardening as if life depends on it
What we do with our land, however small an area, matters not just to us, but to the life of our planet. Landscaping isn’t a static, visual element but an active participant in the world we create. It can foster healthy soil and air or drench it with chemicals. Clean water as it filters through healthy soil or send it laden with toxic compounds to underground aquifers or nearby waters.
Most importantly, it can help save birds, butterflies, and other living beings from extinction.
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Beavers: nature’s brilliant water engineers
North American history is beaver history. Before the European fur trade took hold in the 1600s, the entire continent was one mesh of wetlands after another thanks to at least 7.3 million years of landscape management by hundreds of millions of beavers.
Earth’s consummate water engineers, beavers had it all figured out. And we are now enlisting them to figure it out for us.
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The emerald kingdom: the magic of moss
The wildly abundant, even overwhelming rain that has been falling on California this season has turned my neighborhood into a world of emerald fluff. In the woods, I walk through a green so pervasive that it’s palpable, almost breathable, both delicious and disorienting.
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The lost words
In 2007 the Oxford Junior Dictionary removed the word acorn from its print edition. Also the words blackberry, otter, willow, bluebell, and newt. Fifty such ‘nature words’ were eliminated and replaced by words like broadband, MP3 player, and chatroom.