If
one speaks it should only be to say, as well as one can, how wonderfully all
this fits together, to indicate what a long, fierce peace can derive from this
knowledge.
—Barry Holstun Lopez, from Children in the Woods
There is an exuberance in the heart of Nature that is identical to the exuberance in the hearts of human beings. This is the fundamental nature shared by all of creation; it is the life force that evolved elemental hydrogen into human beings. It has also been called the ground of our being, the elixir of life, and the wellspring of our souls.
In these moments we know what it means to feel like we're at the center of the universe. On our left, the world recedes in ever-smaller scale until it vanishes in a mist of subatomic fields. On our right the world recedes in ever-increasing scale until it vanishes in a mist of stars too numerous to count, suspended in a void too vast to imagine. The everyday world in which you and I live exists at the conjunction of this paradoxical world—at the crossroads of the infinities.
It is here at the crossroads where all of life is related in form and line, in fear and desire, in need and wonder. Our relationships are as infinite as our ability to sense them, our ability to go beyond either superstition or certainty, and to witness, to try to synthesize in a photograph, this great mystery. For the expression of nature's exuberance that is uniquely human exists at the conjunction of all that we know and all that we feel—at the marriage of Logos & Eros. It is here that we find the spark in the vastness, the articulation of our wholeness—the meaning of our lives. The relationships are crystallized, and we finally know where we are in the world: We are at home.
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