Nothing has the potential to move us off dead center quite as powerfully as unexpected encounters in nature. From the meadows to the mountaintops, from the devoted pet to the flight of the bumblebee--the ways that nature nurtures us bring tears to our eyes and resolve to our hearts. And we are often brought into the place of allowing the spirit to finally get through to us. The possibilities are endless--the motion of the tides, the cleansing of a rainstorm, the dormancy of winter--all remind us that a force greater than ourselves turns the clock of this universe. Nature immerses us in that power.
The multiplication of technologies in the name of efficiency is actually eradicating free time by making it possible to maximize the time and place for production and minimize the unstructured travel time in between...Too, the rhetoric of efficiency around these technologies suggests that what cannot be quantified cannot be valued-that that vast array of pleasures which fall into the category of doing nothing in particular, of woolgathering, cloud-gazing, wandering, window-shopping, are nothing but voids to be filled by something more definite, more production, or faster-paced...I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.