What can be more restorative and soul-satisfying than seeking out moments of beauty in nature? As writers, we need to refill our creative wells by drinking in the beauty of the world around us. To inspire us, a gathering of writerly wisdom about the joys of nature:*
“Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.” George Washington Carver
“I am in love with this world. I have nestled lovingly in it. I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.” John Burroughs
“To me, a wilderness is where the flow of wildness is essentially uninterrupted by technology; without wilderness the world is a cage. . . There is not as much wilderness out there as I wish there were. There is more inside than you think.” David Brower, Founder, the Sierra Club
I have learned a lot from trees;
Sometimes about the weather,
Sometimes about animals,
Sometimes about the Great Spirits.
Tatanga Mani “Walking Buffalo,” Chief of the Nakoda
“These are islands in time — with nothing to date them on the calendar of mankind. In these areas it is as though a person were looking backward into the ages and forward untold years. Here are bits of eternity, which have a preciousness beyond all accounting.”
Harvey Broome, Co-founder of The Wilderness Society
“I held a blue flower in my hand, probably a wild aster, wondering what its name was, and then thought that human names for natural things are superfluous. Nature herself does not name them. The important thing is to know this flower, look at its color until the blends become as real as a keynote of music. Look at the exquisite yellow flowerets at the center; become very small with them. Be the flower, be the trees, the blowing grasses. Fly with the birds, jump with a squirrel! Sally Carrighar
“What a country chooses to save is what a country chooses to say about itself.” Mollie Beatty, Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service
“The earth laughs in flowers.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
And now, renewed and refreshed by a dip into beauty, let’s all write on!
*These quotes come to us by way of The Heron Dance Art Journal, a lovely online journal on art and creativity: https://herondance.org
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