A rope swing at Blue Lakes, where young humans swing out into a feeling of connectedness with the universe, whether they are consciously aware of it or not.
In the beginning of the story of man...
"Having become aware of objects and begun to name them, this Earliest Man became aware of something else. It is a remarkable fact that no sooner had he looked closely at the phenomena of Nature than he began to concern himself with, not the visible object in front of him which he could clearly see, but with an invisible object which he could not see at all. He looked at the trees, the rocks, the rivers, the animals, and having looked at them he at once began to talk about something IN THEM which he had never seen and never heard of. This thing inside the objective appearance was called a god. No one forced man at this time to think about gods, there was no tradition imposing it upon him - and yet his first thoughts seemed to have turned towards a Thing behind the thing, a Force behind or within the appearance. Thus WORSHIP..."
- John Stewart Collis, "The Triumph of the Tree"
"I begin, then, with the assumption that perhaps the great disaster of human history is one that happened to or within religion: that is, the conceptual division between the holy and the world, the excerpting of the Creator from the creation."
- Wendell Berry
"... whereas under polytheism the gods were intimately connected with the earth, and stimulated veneration for it, under monotheism deity was extracted from the earth. God was promoted to higher regions. He went completely out of sight. It became possible to fear God without fearing Nature - nay, to love God (whatever was meant) and to hate his creations."
- John Stewart Collis
"If God was not in the world, then obviously the world was a thing of inferior importance, or of no importance at all. Those who were disposed to exploit it were thus free to do so. And this split in public attitudes was inevitably mirrored in the lives of individuals: A man could aspire to heaven with his mind and his heart while destroying the earth, and his fellow men, with his hands."
- Wendell Berry
A peregrine falcon has been put to work by man. His job is to chase gulls from the dump, starlings from the vineyards, and geese from the airport.
Toyons are in fruit throughout the Mayacamas Range.
