Wonders of Nature

H ave you ever wondered about a drop of water?  You should, as the whole of human existence, all human thought and creativity, rests on a slight bend in the nature of water.  R ound your lips and gently blow on the surface of a teaspoon.  See how the water in your breath has collected on the cool metal.  Place it on the tip of your nose and let the spoon hang there.  Dip the spoon back in a glass of water and glide it smoothly across your arm.  You see, water is glue and a lubricant at the same time.  Bizarre, isn’t it?     L ucky us, we live in a place in the universe that has water aplenty.  Our home is covered with a liquid ocean of the stuff and the air is infused with it.  Look outside on a wintry day, and you see water in all three states of matter.  The transition between ice, liquid, and gas releases or absorbs a huge amount of heat, and that energy allows water to cycle through the natural world....

Plum Island National Wildlife Refuge Is there a place, or a landscape that stirs your soul more than any other?  For me it’s probably the simple beauty and marvelous symmetry of sand dunes.  I’ve traveled to the Saharan sands, walked along the dunes that line the coast of Florida, and visited Great Sands National Park in Colorado.  But the truth is, I don’t have to go very far at all to stand in the hills of sand I love most. One of my favorite natural places is an eleven-mile long sandbar in northern Massachusetts called Plum Island.  It’s a wildlife sanctuary and as a child I saw my first bald eagle there; and also my first red fox, great blue heron, piping plovers; and the place I caught my first striped bass fishing at night along the surf.  Last year, I witnessed a young seal making its way along the surf, and a great cormorant wading in the offshore swells. The southern 2/3 of the island has been designated as Parker River National Wildlife Refuge...

Monet - Sunset in Venice There’s no other satisfaction like creating something.  That sense of accomplishment nourishes the soul in a way nothing else does. When the bible says we were created in the image of God, I wonder if it meant not so much that we look like, but rather that we create like God.   In my case, my fingers compose words and they appear on the screen in front of me… black, white and flat words, but wholly beautiful and powerful.  I am sharing my thoughts, literally part of who I am, with you.  It’s absolutely incredible.      My hands could be playing the piano instead, shaping mud and earth, holding a camera, or perhaps a paint brush dabbing flames of color on a canvas.  They could be arching through the air as I’m dancing or wielding a hammer.   When we think about what it means to be fully human I see no other thing more essential as the ability to create.  Making is as needful of a thing...

Rock field on Mt. Jefferson, NH When you pick up a lowly rock from the ground, you are touching something unimaginably incredible.   Yes, you have probably heard that a rock is a collection of minerals, and that minerals are made from elements, created by stars.  It’s all star stuff, the rocks, clouds and landscape you see in the image, and that’s pretty amazing, but there is even more to ponder. Thinking about a rock is pretty impressive.  For instance, if you compress the age of the oldest rock on earth to a year, the pyramids were built a few seconds ago.  The elements that make up that rock are older still, perhaps almost as old as the universe itself.  So, twirl that rock round your fingers and then forget all that… Imagine nothingness.  A white dot pops into existence… welcome the universe. This dot is so hot that the best minds among us are still wondering what it might have been like.  All that will ever e...