We eat food that comes from the soil, the sun, the sky, and we shit back into the sewer. We are incapable of isolation. Every time we sip wine, feed the cat, order pizza, overtime we do anything, anything at all, we are brushing, however, surreptitiously, however beneath our awareness – however, even, against our will – a wilder, natural world. Such awareness is simultaneously daunting and beautiful. It means that everything we do matters, and matters wondrously. More than we thought, more than we can even know. Yes, of course we must do all of the things we now know by rote: …recycle, compost, and ride our bikes, and buy organic, local, biointensive, fair-trade. All of it. And if we can manage these things with a joyful heart, then all the better. But this is not about checklists, is it? About the reduction of our planetary relationships to a mean tally of resources used, saved, and available?
It is about a habit of being, a way of knowing, a way of dwelling. It is about attentive recognition of our constant, inevitable continuity with life on earth, and the gorgeous knowledge this entails. There is a crow’s nest in the neighbor’s yard, and there are feathers at our feet. We walk around like poems – our lives infused with meaning beyond themselves.
— Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness (via anniekoh)
