Sea and Sky

There is a rhythm to the natural world around. It's beats rise and fall with a song that resonateswith each of us. It calls to us in a language which we have forgotten or struggle to hear but which strikes a harmonic in the core of out being. We are after all a part of that world despite our many efforts to convince ourselves that we travel on parallel but separate paths.I have been reminded in many ways recently of the importance of the natural world to our well being and the very way we go about our lives. It pervades everything from the Cyclone in Myanmar, a program about a new moon on NPR, to the simple walk across the campus from the little yellow house to the campus office where I can't help but gaze out across the waters of lake superior. So why is it that we so often feel disconnected from this natural world? Is it of
relevance to humanity and society to recognize this relationship and seek to take it into account in our development, technological innovation, and anthropocentric lifestyles which cast us as independent of the rest of earth biological systems?For me the natural world was one aspect of what pulled me into this experience. I knew that I missed big water. Having grown up on Lake Erie and now living on the shores of Superior, the majesty of the great lakes are often lost upon those who have never seen them. They are of a scale lost on many simply because they are called lakes. Often I am struck looking out the windows of the little yellow house to gaze south across the water in the direction of much of the rest of the country and know that they are there, waiting unseen beyond the blue-green horizon of the water. It is an experience paralleled in many other I have had in the past. Sitting beneath the overwhelming presence of the Bethel sky in AK where one is dwarfed by the magnitude of an unobscured starscape which covers the entirety of your line of sight. The light as it grows or fades across the central american mountains, watched over by the hulking giant Tejumulco. While the majesty of those experiences stand out, I cannot however

ignore that such magic is everywhere. Perhaps it just takes a shock of such magnitude to remind us it is there. Before leaving dayton I often sought out trees as a respite in the natural
world. To me, a slight breeze and a certain bench was enough to once again feel the pulse of
this greater organism to which I am a part.

In exploring the town I have begun to go out into the natural beauty which permeates the surroundings on every side now that I have settle in a bit. Most recently walking out to artists point which lies on a spit jutting out into the lake. I have been told that it was originally an island off shore but was connected to the mainland at some point later on. It would seem that it was done to allow access to the light houses which reside there as well as a means of building a breakwall with which to shelter the harbor and ships docked here in town. To stepout on the rocks on the south side of the point is to emerge in another world. Away from town, from civilization and the noise and bustle which is currently tied so tightly to it. For me at least, what is left in such moments is an emptiness of the tension too often overwhelming us from day to day. An emptiness that rings with a calm and peace. It is an emptiness only of the buzz and hum which we have become so accustomed in our modernity but which is overfull of other treasures which seem lost in our advanced way of living. It is a space I have missed for far too long and it serves to remind me of some of the reasons why I came.Perhaps it is time for another walk in the woods.....Much peace,charlie