Wild Like Flowers, Introduction

"Let us talk for a moment about wildness. How many old and silent ponds have you walked past? Did you notice the frogs? Bashō’s brilliance is that he highlights the pond by showing you a frog."

This is the Introduction of my second book, Wild Like Flowers: The Restoration of Relationship Through Regeneration. You can buy the book here. Or, you can read it here.

Introduction

Let us talk for a moment about wildness. Put down your seed catalogues and no-till-drills and put on your boots. It is time to go for a walk. The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus compares wildness with recklessness, rashness, foolhardiness, dereliction, and heedlessness. But while on our walk, let us think of it as the geography of hope, connection and awareness—a medium for reciprocity.

Look here at this ancient forest and the spring buried deep within its open glades, rich in minerals and rhythms as it bubbles to the surface. Taste it, feel its lucid legitimacy, watch its gentle haste, its racing present-ness, its steady surge of life anew. Why does its thousand-year journey emerge here? It returns only silence, for it seeks to support life and not to define it. Drink its water and be nourished as the spring itself has been nourished by the rich melodies of woodland birds and biota. Hush. Do you hear that? It is Silence and she is speaking. Consider the flutter of summer’s swallows just beyond this open canopy. Watch their wild placidity, their calm fervor, their race to nowhere and to everywhere—summer’s shiny sequins sewn into the seams of wild accouterments. Is there not purpose in their chance maneuvers? If they are heedless and if this spring is reckless, then call me a fool.