The Eight Master Lessons of Nature: What Nature Teaches Us About Living Well in the World

by Gary Ferguson

A riveting manifesto for the millions of people who long to forge a more vital, meaningful connection to the natural world to live a better, more fulfilling life
 
Looking around at the world today—a world of skyscrapers, super highways, melting ice caps, and rampant deforestation—it is easy to feel that humanity has actively severed its ties with nature. It’s no wonder that we are starving to rediscover a connection with the natural world.

With new insights into the inner workings of nature's wonders, Gary Ferguson presents a fascinating exploration into how many of the most remarkable aspects of nature are hardwired into our very DNA. What emerges is a dazzling web of connections that holds powerful clues about how to better navigate our daily lives. 

Through cutting-edge data and research, drawing on science, psychology, history, and philosophy, The Eight Master Lessons of Nature will leave readers with a feeling of hope, excitement, and joy. It is a dazzling statement about the powers of physical, mental, and spiritual wellness that come from reclaiming our relationship with Mother Nature. Lessons about mystery, loss, the fine art of rising again, how animals make us smarter, and how the planet’s elders make us better at life are unforgettable and transformative.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Science, Self Help, Audiobook, Philosophy, Spirituality

271 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 22, 2019

About the author

Nature writer, 1956-
Award-winning author Gary Ferguson has written for a variety of national publications, including Vanity Fair and the Chicago Tribune, and is the author of twenty-six books on nature and science. His memoir, The Carry Home, which the Los Angeles Times called “gorgeous, with beauty on every page,” was awarded “Best Nature book of the Year” by the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute. Gary is the co-founder of Full Ecology, with his wife, social scientists Mary M. Clare.

Reviews

[Linda Bond · Rating 5 out of 5]

The true beauty of works by authors like Ferguson is not only related to their superb storytelling ability, but their deep understanding of nature and our connections to all that is around us. His previous books offered moving accounts of wildlife, wilderness areas, and changes that are occurring daily. But this latest offering is perhaps a culmination of all that has gone before. Gleaning the wisdom he has gained, particularly from his latest research – drawing from disciplines as diverse as philosophy, history and science – we are treated to a kind of hope about the future in the midst of warnings about what has transpired. Can we learn to apply all that nature teaches us about growth, survival and even love? I certainly hope so and want to thank Mr. Ferguson for sharing his well-earned wisdom with all of us.

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I live in the country on thirty-nine acres of pasture and forest. Most of the day I am busy with raising about 90 sheep, repairing things and looking after other animals. This book caused me to stop and look around the farm without seeing work to be done. It was beautiful. I live in a park. This book can be life changing. I think it has changed mine.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received 'Eight Master Lessons of Nature' as a Christmas present. The cover is very pretty, however I was a little wary as there's no information about the author to be found in the blurb or opening pages. When reading non-fiction, I like to have some expectations of style: journalistic, academic, memoir, etc. When I began reading, I found the folksy American tone a bit trying at first, as it seemed somewhat inappropriate for a white American man to be opining on the importance of nature. However, my initial qualms were soothed as Ferguson displayed a pleasing self-awareness and sincerity that I came to appreciate.

There are definitely elements on memoir here, however the book is largely a paean to the natural world and spending time with it. A variety of literary and oral tradition sources are drawn upon to supplement personal experience. There are some broad generalisations about the Enlightenment, but nothing that seemed incorrect or wholly misinterpreted. Rather than stimulating the tiresomely pedantic academic part of my brain, reading '8 Master Lessons of Nature' brought back happy memories of wandering through meadows, along rivers, and across moors in years past. I'm fundamentally an indoor person, yet lockdown has led me to appreciate glimpses of nature in my daily walks that I'd previously taken for granted. Spotting ducklings, identifying fritillaries, listening to a river babble, and seeing unfurling fern fronds have all disproportionately lifted my spirits. In short, once I became used to the style of writing, I found myself greatly in agreement with the book's thesis, for example:

However, the idea of kicking ourselves out of the garden as a kind of self-punishment is itself a trap, a kind of binary thinking, which, in its own way, is an act of separation no less objectifying than the Greek idea that nature could only be studied by standing outside it. We don't get to throw ourselves out of the garden. We remain connected because that's the only way any of us gets to live on this planet. We can grieve our mistakes, take a couple of deep breaths, and get busy patiently repairing the relationships we've either strained or left in tatters.

Most of the ideas explained here were not entirely new to me, albeit presented in a clear, accessible, and interconnected way. An unfamiliar part that I found thought-provoking, however, concerned turning the concept of anthropocentrism on its head. Rather than assuming we are projecting upon other animals when we ascribe emotions or thoughts to them, perhaps we as humans emulate certain animal behaviours? I found this neat reversal a much more powerful thought experiment than all the academic theorising in Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Indeed, by the end of the book I was enjoying the sincerity and clarity of the writing and felt rather ashamed of the academic snobbery I began it with. '8 Master Lessons of Nature' is a suitable lockdown read as it is optimistic and uplifting in tone. It avoids the dense thickets of theory around the relationship between humans and our environment, instead presenting the earnest view that above all we should just enjoy nature. In mood, this makes it the exact obverse of Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays by Paul Kingsnorth. Where Kingsnorth's time in nature is characterised by mourning and sadness, Ferguson's is characterised by joy and hope. While both are well worth reading and thinking about, I would not want to re-read Kingsnorth at the moment.

[Amy Layton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be a refreshing glimpse at environmentalism, especially as Gary Ferguson weaves anecdotes and statistics together as he makes the arguments for how and why nature is not only important but entirely necessary.  He discusses emotions such as happiness, grief, sadness--the despair of watching superfires burn down hundreds of acres of woods, and the hope that comes from watching the forest rebuild itself.  The awe of discovering how interconnected indigenous species are to an environment and the frustration at the demolition of fields and mountains.  

Ferguson's tone is largely conversational, which makes his book about nature teaching us lessons much more accessible and not holier-than-thou at all.  He offers some suggestions every now and then--such as going out and taking a walk to admire nature, understanding the indigenous flora and fauna in one's area, and to attempt to reclaim our connection with Mother Nature.

Overall, I found this to be a really well-done book that suggests taking it upon ourselves to communicate more with each other and with nature, and to truly find the beauty that lies just outside our front doors.  

Review cross-listed here!

[Gerben Cramer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Een bevestiging van wat we stiekem al wisten: (nog meer) de natuur in – maar dan is het nu ook nog eens prachtig onderbouwd. Ook fijn voorgelezen door Wilbert Gieske.

[Strouckje · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wetenschappelijk boek over hoe de natuur zichzelf in stand houdt en welke bescheiden rol de mens daarin speelt. Ook over wat de natuur voor de mens en voor jou als persoon kan betekenen. Een boek dat je aan het denken zet.

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful little gem of a book.

[Blue Kaufman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meditative, folksy, reminiscent of long hikes deep in the wilderness.

[Jon Larson · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I liked, I really liked. What I disliked, I really disliked. Such was my experience with this book. Initially drawn in by the title and holding a deep belief in nature as a gift from God, I was eager to delve into it. However, I found myself disheartened when the narrative veered into discussions of privilege and racism, seemingly out of place in a book centered on nature.

In Lesson 3, the focus shifted abruptly to topics such as the "oppression of gender" and feelings of "shame and guilt," which felt disconnected from the theme of the book. As did this line, “Getting stuck in that shame is another form of self-indulgence. The fruit only available to the privileged”.

Lesson 4 took a departure from the expected, replacing the biblical creation story with references to a mother goddess or a heaven and earth goddess, accompanied by a mandatory discourse on climate change.

I find it frustrating when books insert what I perceive as "woke" commentary, as if it's a prerequisite for relevance in today's discourse. The author would have served their purpose better by remaining focused on the intended subject matter, without unnecessary detours.

In conclusion, while there were aspects of the book that resonated with me, the inclusion of what I perceived as ideological insertions detracted from its overall impact.

Here are the 8 lessons:
1. Mystery: Wisdom begins when we embrace all that we don’t know.
2. Life on earth thrives thanks to a vast garden of connections.
3. The more kinds of life in the forest, the stronger that life becomes.
4. Healing the planet, and ourselves, means recovering the feminine.
5. Our animal cousins make us happier and smarter.
6. We live on a planet with energy beyond measure, yet life doesn’t waste a drop.
7. After disaster and disruption: Nature teaches us the fine art of rising again.
8. Old growth: The planet elders can help us be better at life.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written, highly thoughtful book by a master storyteller. I loved this book. The author explores many topics in this book, all of them interesting and worthwhile. Much of his book is set in Yellowstone, as he tells stories of his times in the more remote parts of the national park and shares what he has learned. There's a lot to unpack in this book, from how nature makes us feel better to feminism to the benefits of diversity in nature. Highly recommended.

[Kelsey Ebling · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was wonderful. you should read it.

[Chintushig Tumenbayar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Асуудал тулгарсан уу? Шийд олж чадахгүй байна уу? Гадаа гарж алхвал яасан юм бэ гэж эхлэх энэ номонд амьдарлын олон асуудлын шийдлийг хайгаагүй үедээ бид байгал дэлхийгээсээсээ олдог гэжээ. Сонирхолтой санагдаж болох ч дэлхий маань туулж өнгөрүүлсэн зүйлсийн хажууд бидний бэрхшээлүүд жижиг шүү дээ. Аливаа систем яаж ажиллаж, юугаар тэтгэгдэж байгааг анзаарах нь цаагуураа existential түвшний ойлголт мэдрэмжээ шинэчлэх том түлхүүр шиг санагдлаа.

[Karina Samyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je moet mij niet vertellen welke kracht eruit gaat van de natuur, van de verwondering, bewondering, schoonheid. Leuk om te lezen dat ook andere mensen dit zo intens voelen en eveneens nood hebben aan verbondenheid met andere wezens. De eerste hoofdstukken vond ik heel goed, op het laatst werd het wat melig waardoor eerder 3,5 dan 4.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Told with an envious poetic vein, Ferguson exudes sensing nature, truly experiencing it, becoming it. This is beautiful. Enthralling. Evoking. Bliss!

Likened to Jainism (in my mind) he beholds all as sacred, all intricately woven with our own DNA, through time, quantum physics, our back yards. A priority for diversity is also stressed, in all living creatures, great and small, as they all benefit the whole by means.

Anthropomorphism (tho why it needs a term when it’s just as natural for them as us) is a chapter on its own. Cases and quotes through time and experience. I often wonder if my cat really has emotional attachment to me beyond food. But then when he runs to greet me when I return home or hides around a corner to “scare” me as I often do him, or even the times he tucked into me when scared .. emotions? Methinks so. But this chapter was difficult to read, in that it mentions the injustice done to helpless beings. I pressed the mute button, skimmed, did a Phoebe. I know it happened (happens) but I read to escape sadness. Quick chapter. There was a heavy focus on wolves: protected, protecting & even providing, and the matriarchal leadership in their packs. Actually, there is a deep bow to the feminine throughout this book. Namaste!

My favorite chapter dealt with how nature heals. Being within it can alleviate so much, so quickly, I dare wonder just why there are not natural areas abutting playgrounds at schools, next to gyms, surrounding businesses instead of totally parking lots, and so forth. Imagine the peaceful existence when one could “let off steam” being quiet under a tree instead of on a bar stool tipping 2 too many? Ah.

Latitudinarians. Look this up. Become.

How nature recovers from catastrophic events is also an awesome chapter. Bigger and better, greater adaptation, and all but a shrug of “been there, done that” ethos. Amazing. Tho given climate change and hotter, bigger forest fires, things are not so ducky. It appears the hotter fires are sterilizing the soil, which hinders regrowth. It doesn’t prevent it, it just takes a much longer time to happen.

After the tragic death of his wife in a canoeing accident, he sets off on a nature trek, ironically similar to the wolf he wrote of earlier who lost her mate. How akin we are to our cohabitators here on earth is always evident, were we to merely observe.

Much shared of his many nature diving. Living in every moment, steeped in its essence. The people along the way and those back home, who saw him off. It’s a friendly journey. I’m glad I went along.

[Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm all for living more at peace with nature and the animal world and do think we have a lot to learn from both. I'm just not sure how to incorporate those lessons into our urban centers. It might be possible if everyone could live as a self sufficient yeoman farmer with enough land to feed an entire family as some of the American Founding Fathers envisioned because they imagined America had unlimited land and resources. However, it is exactly that thinking which treated the world as a locker we could endless rob and as a place we could pollute with toxins because the earth could absorb it all. But Ferguson is correct that a lot of ideas that developed in the scientific and rational mindset of Western Europe reeked havoc on the natural world and our relationship to it. Maybe we will learn that the world is not simply a treasury of resources which we can recklessly use and waste because it is all endless. Maybe we will learn that nature is our neighbor which we have to live with and are dependent on. And maybe we will learn that nature is to be observed not just to do scientific experiments on it but because it really does contain lessons about life, about being human, about our Creator. But I do think the current American administration is deaf to all of that and is only about consumption and unconcerned about pollution.

[Barbi Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very thoughtful read. Reinforces what we probably already know but need to be reminded. Particularly liked reading about Pearl who lived to 102 years - and shared two strong notions: 1) that fear has little room to grow in those who simply keep going, one day at a time and 2) that such persistence was fueled by gratitude - and big, regular doses of nature. She further taught the author to not give in to the temptation to build walls - and do not get too fond of your own drama!
Very good book.

[Sharon Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the book is an absolute masterpiece. Stating why we need to learn from nature telling a multitude of stories from different cultures. Always returning to the organic beauty that is nature to cleanse our bodies minds and souls. The book was throughly enjoyable and I would highly recommend it.

[Bethany Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This lovely book teaches gently about learning, feminism, discrimination, community, research, communication, and, by the way, nature. It’s the observation of the world and how it works without human intervention. It’s the mystery of the natural world and our place in it. It’s so so beautiful.

#reading #books #garyferguson #nature #beauty #thenaturalworld #science #humannature #lifelessons

[Edie Hanafin Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a fabulously well-written book. It gave me so much hope about nature and our relationship with it. I wrote down a lot of quotes. There was so much wisdom in this book. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. Thank you so much, Mr. Ferguson.

[Jozefien Desaever · Rating 5 out of 5]

I warmly recommend this nurturing, poetic book that reveals our deep interconnectedness with all that surrounds us.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

“When we shed the long-standing illusion that there’s nature “out there” and then there’s us “in here”…it is possible to mend our relationship to the world around us and through that mending, release an intelligence millions of years in the making.”

Really good, accessible read for the case for nature as home, as song, as breath, as oxygen, as meditation practice, all of the things I feel on a hike and spending time in the forest, mountains, desert, even my backyard. I was transported to that feeling sitting in my living room. I always wonder if I were bedbound, paralyzed, or locked into a cell, could I remember and evoke the feelings I have been gifted with on hikes and in nature and this book really does that well. What he writes is basically a call for all to get into nature in any way possible because it heals and helps and can save us.

“Out in nature you’ve got 4.6 billion years of success- the absolute best of everything. The finest the world has come up with, all around you, night and day. Go out for a stroll in the woods and you walk among champions!” Lavoy Tolbert

Who wouldn’t be a little thrilled to learn that spiders can fly by employing electrical charges in the atmosphere? Standing on their hind legs, they cast silk into the air. That silk is negatively charged and repels similar negative charges in the surrounding atmosphere, sending the spiders ballooning into the heavens. Or who wouldn’t feel a twitch of bewilderment to think that 99.999999 percent of our body is comprised of the empty space that exists between the electrons, neutrons and protons…if you got ride of all this space, then the actual mass of your body would be so small you couldn’t even see it…

Think, too, for a minute about the fact that as you walk down the street today you won’t really be making contact with the ground. Rather, the magnetic force of the electrons in your shoes will be pushing away the electrons in the pavement, which means that a supremely close-up level you really aren’t walking through your life with your feet on the ground at all. You’re floating. Or the fact that you could blast off from Earth on a journey to find the end of space, travel a hundred thousand miles an hour for the next ten thousand years, and not be one inch closer.
Mystery: Wisdom begins when we embrace all that we don’t know.

Wandering the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho or the chiseled peaks of the Tetons, I began to hear the wind as breath- inhaling up the canyons in the morning and then exhaling across the high meadows in midafternoon. The spill of those winds, fed by the warming and the cooling of the day, made different music depending on what branches and leaves and trunks happened to be living there. There was the hard whispering song of the lodgepole pines, as well as the wavelike hiss of the Douglas fir. There was the stream-like babbling of aspen leaves, which was entirely different from the sharp, driving rhythms of the speckled alder. In the lowlands was the stiff, whipping sound of sagebrush and the contented rustle of wheatgrass. Then, near the top of the world, just below the tundra, I could hear the music of subalpine fir, tuned by the fact that the windward branches were pruned away by harsh weather.

Rather than our thoughts being disconnected from our bodies, as we’ve assumed from Greek times, they may at times be driven by our bodies. By putting your body in nature, and once there engaging the full range of your senses, you may well be assembling powerful packets of symbols by which you can lay down a very different, very intriguing new way of experiencing the world and its mystery in the days and years to come.

Nature can be fast. Earthquakes. Volcanic eruptions. Lightning. Wildfires. Flash floods. But the natural world rests on an inescapable foundation of long-term expressions. A coast redwood will reach for the sky across a thousand years, going from a tiny sapling nursing on a fallen log to a mature tree weight an astonishing twelve million pounds. Rivers take millennia to carve out new routes to the sea. Mountains are both rising and crumbling at the same time, growing and shrinking by the inch over millions of years. Hiking across the long sweeps of alpine tundra on the northeast edges of Yellowstone, I’m routinely humbled by the fact that it takes more than a thousand years to make just the top inch of soil my boots walk on.

Then there are the yawning stretches of time needed to navigate the reaches of space. When we gaze into the night sky, because of how long it takes the light from those stars to reach our eyes, the scene we’re swooning over is actually one from decades or even centuries in the past. Lingering in nature helps us make peace with this more fundamental pace of emergence, letting us put away clock time for a little while and roll instead with the rhythm of physical time.

As I grew older, the woods seemed richer still. In part because a rapidly expanding scientific understanding has given them a shimmer as bright and compelling as any legend or myth. We now know that conifer trees have larger, more complex genomes than almost any other life-form on Earth. That big spruce tree you may walk pas now and then in the town square has, as a species, been quietly going about its business for several hundred million years, which has helped produce genetic material seven times bigger than your own.

And we know that individual trees can have extraordinary longevity. Not just the bristlecone pines of California, some four even five thousand years old, which means they first sprouted around the time Stonehenge was rising. But also the root system of the 106 acre Pando aspen grove in Utah- the largest know life-form on the planet- thought to be an astonishing eighty thousand years old, which places its starting point at roughly the time humans were leaving Africa on their epic journey to settle the world.

Trees are exceptional portals into glimpses of essential interdependence. Right this minute the oak grove near the St. Joseph River, information about invading bugs is being broadcast between trees by means of airborne hormones- a trick that helps coordinate making defense compounds in the stems and leaves. Some of the trees, struggling against chomping caterpillars, are releasing pheromones as a signal to call in nearby wasps. The wasps then buzz over and lay eggs; their offspring, in turn, end up dining on the invading caterpillars and thus save the trees. Apple trees under similar attack get even faster relief, releasing chemicals that signal caterpillar eating songbirds. That sort of green talk, expressed through a language of chemical exchange, is going on all over the planet, wafting through the air.

Life on earth thrives thanks to a vast garden of connection

Thich Nhat Hanh: “Your mind is here also, so that we can say that everything is here within this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not in here- time, space, Earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything coexists on this piece of paper.” After three months neck-deep in the Thorofare of Yellowstone, I knew that he was right. And also, that everything coexists, too, with the lodgepole pine. The wolf. The raven. The elk. The bear. My time in that outback offered me a kind of course correction. I started to put down my unquestioned faith that everything knowable was available with the application of rational, objective science. I also started wondering what the world might feel like if we held the kind of perspective that still shines through many indigenous languages, where life is described more in terms of verbs than nouns. So rather than telling someone you saw a deer, it’s more that you experienced the various forms of life coming together to express themselves in a creature that’s “deering.”

What if we could free ourselves from the confines of certainty- to learn to dance with the fact that reality zigs and zags across shifting ground? Increasingly I’m seeing the great relief that can come from letting go of our insistence that the world be fixed in bound forms, each fated to act within a narrow range of predictability. Instead we can learn to awaken each day much as some of the best scientists do, more excited with the new questions the morning brings than with the answers we found yesterday afternoon. Delighting in the fac that the learning never ends.

By the time Descartes came along, the world was a good hundred years into being driven by gears and levers and springs. Which led people to think of the universe- right down to the brains and bodies of mammals as machinery. Likewise, when chemistry was on the rise in the eighteenth century, many came to see human life and love in terms of chemical reactions. Then, with the first breakthroughs in wireless communication happened… the brain was being compared to a telegraph. In the 1950s we became computers…What had come before in the way of poetry and story, including the fanciful folktales of fairies and pixies and nymphs and wildland spirits were dismissed out of hand. As for the tales of Africa, or even the rich, layered stories coming out of the Americas, like those of the Penobscot and the Iroquois, were quickly dismissed…

Thankfully, throughout such times there have always been outliers among the powerful. As there are today. You may be one of them. People who resist the excesses roiling through the streets from whatever the current big thing of the day happens to be.

“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature,” conceded the brilliant Nobel quantum physicist Max Planck in 1932. “And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.” Just his saying this was really big. So big that ninety years later a lot of us are still trying to get our heads around it.

We’re many years out from pure objectivity being held up as the one true way. Yet when I go outside tonight to look at the stars and planets, my initial sense will be that all those beautiful shimmering points of light are incredibly lovely things “out there,” they in their world and I down here in mine. It will take a little while, a little settling down, before I can really feel the fact that the force of creation that gave those stars and planets their mass and their orbit and their chemistry is the very same force, with the same materials, that produced an Earth with such a staggering flush of life. When I’m successful, when I can manage to go beyond seeing disparate pieces and rest instead in what’s really a vast sea of connection, then, the often-quoted maxim that we’re all made of stardust goes from poetry to reality.

Healing the planet, and ourselves, means recovering the feminine
Nature has created a world where the success of elephants and wolves and lions and countless other species comes from a full expression of both sexes…life thrives when the masculine and feminine are fully partnered. Even so, for much of the past four thousand years, humans have been hard pressed to live with the truth, choosing to move through the world with masculine energy as their chief guide. Arguably, of all the wrong turns we’ve made when it comes to living well with the Earth…its hard to imagine a more calamitous step than this.

How did we end up in such a strange place- ostensibly struggling to understand the world, all the while having blinded ourselves to fully half of its wisdom? Actually, there was a time when humans were a lot more inclined to celebrate and nourish the essential skills and insights of the feminine. We know this in part from looking at the myths of ancient cultures…an archetypal feminine energy that was essential to life itself.

Joseph Campbell used the term “the great reversal” to describe the time (around 600 BC) when the holiness of our own nature and the nature of the universe slid away under canons of belief that imagined us as captives to individual bodies and to the Earth, locked in an insufferable state of sin. A big reason that such an idea could ever spark and burn is due in part to our having turned our backs on the feminine…Powerful rulers were quashing nature-goddess stories in favor of solo acts by blustery male gods.

Today we stand without a single enduring creative or scientific tradition or institution, not art or music or writing, nor philosophy or psychology or medicine, that doesn’t still express remnants of this lopsided, masculine-dominated trajectory. Even history and anthropology still struggle with this limited vision. The prevailing hunter-gatherer theory of early human behavior has long seen men in the role of hunters…while women care for the young and gather local edible plants. Largely absent from the model is any nod to the roles that women- like so many other female mammals- may have had in directing and sustaining alliances or prompting peace deals.

Going through life stripped on that sense of unification, of relationship, we came to see a person, a tree, an animal, as stand-alone beings, which has often caused us to miss the crucial connections they hold…to see through a feminine lens, suggests the ancient Tao Te Ching, is to see that which “clothes and feels all things but does not claim to be master over them.” Rediscovering this quality of inclusiveness learning to “hold it all,” allows us to move past the idea of saving just small pieces of the planet and to focus instead on saving the whole system.

For a very long time we’ve assumed that wolves were among the first animals adopted into human culture. An orphaned pup, the story goes, is taken into a camp and raised by the people who live there. But we might start also considering stories that describe things moving in rather the opposite direction. What if bold, highly affable wolves showed up around human encampments, relying on their wise discernment to actively seek us out as social partners? Not survival of the fittest, but rather, as Princeton evolutionary biologist Bridgett von Holdt describes it, “survival of the friendliest.”

We live on a planet with energy beyond measure, yet life doesn’t waste a drop.
Some years back, science writer Oliver Morton came up with a fascinating mind bender to help us better imagine the staggering amount of energy contained in the sunlight that falls on Earth. He compares this sun energy to a river- and more specifically, Niagara Falls:

“Picture Horseshoe Falls, the most familiar, forceful and dramatic cataract in Niagara Falls, in full spate.
Now increase the height of the falls by a factor of 20; 187 feet to about 3,700 feet, about three times as high as the Empire State Building.
Now increase the flow by a factor of 10, more than twice the volume discharged each second into the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River.
Finally, widen the falls. Stretch them until they span a continent, with billions of tons of water falling over them every second. And don't stop there. Go on widening them until they stretch all around the equator: a kilometer-high wall of water thundering down incessantly, cutting the world in half, deafening leviathan in the abyss. That is what 120,000 terawatts looks like. That is what drives the world in which you live.”

More energy falls from the sun in just an hour and a half than all the energy humans consume from all sources in an entire year.
Jack Gladstone, a Grammy-nominated Blackfeet musician living at the edge of Glacier National Park says that what he focuses on in music is really what drives all of life. Every species. Every ecosystem. “It comes down to three things: harmony, balance, and rhythm.

Researchers at Stanford University have documented actual changes in brain activity from people walking in nature versus walking the same amount of time on busy city streets. Specifically they were looking at neural activity in the part of the brain that tends to ruminate, focusing on worries and negative emotions, the subgenual prefrontal cortex. Out in nature, that rumination decreased significantly. The natural world helps us regulate wayward emotions, which in turn lessens our anxiety. While those benefits can last from days to weeks, it’s worth noting that they seem to accrue. In other words, the more we turn to nature across our lifetimes, the longer and deeper are the positive effects.

The beauty and mystery that embrace us in the natural world, that web of connections going on all around us, somehow nudges us toward a greater presence of mind- the sense that nothing real is ever happening other than what’s unfolding right now. It’s an idea fundamental to many meditation practices- that in any given moment nothing could be other than it is; and as it happens, that notion is a lot easier to hold on to, to breathe into, out in the grass and the sun and the trees.

Mental efficiency for us humans, then, might look something like this: Accept what’s going on because that’s what’s going on. Act in whatever way the circumstances call for, if in fact it calls for anything at all. If you do take action, don’t waste mental and emotional energy either second-guessing yourself or getting overly attached to the result. And finally, try to take to heart an idea that’s been around for well over two thousand years, which suggests that taking care of the self of the deepest levels means being grateful for the fact that you already have everything you need. From what we can tell, every one of these essential perspectives may root in you, and grow more quickly, when fed and watered by the natural world.

A recent study at UCLA found that the simple act of looking for things to be grateful for causes a significant boost of dopamine in the brain stem- essentially mimicking the effects of an antidepressant. As the same time, gratitude has been found to cause an increase in serotonin, precisely the effect of other antidepressants.

[Jeff Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book. The interplay of organisms in the environment is something that one always hears about in science classes, in discussions on nature conservation, and on respect for natural places. This book brings all of those items into clear and compelling focus. There is one error the author makes where he correctly identifies that the staff of Asclepius is the symbol for doctors but then describes the caduceus instead (two snakes twined around a center pole with wings at the top). There are many that make this error; the staff of Asclepius has only one snake around the staff and there are no wings present. I particularly liked the authors description of mental efficiency for humans based on what creatures in nature tend to do (on page 176). "Accept what's going on because that's what's going on. Act in whatever way the circumstance calls for, if in fact it calls for anything at all. If you do take action, don't waste mental and emotional energy either second-guessing yourself or getting overly attached to the result." A really educational read.

[Ridgewood Public · Rating 3 out of 5]

With so many people getting outside to keep busy we can only hope that everyone takes a closer look at the natural world around us and learns to respect it again. This beautiful book talks about how nature thrives and survives because of diversity and strong relationships through interdependence. Some mushrooms growing on the roots of trees will absorb tree nutrients and in turn gives the tree some of the mushrooms healthy nutrients. The world is an interesting place! This book is timely and lovely.

[Manon Van der lit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meteen een favoriet! Dit boek is uitgegeven in 2019 en 6 jaar aan mijn aandacht ontsnapt, hoe kan dat? Wat heeft Ferguson de essentiële lessen uit de natuur toegankelijk voor ons gemaakt in leesbare taal en prachtige verhalen. Het boek heeft me diep geraakt en zou op de verplichte leeslijst van elke middelbare scholier moeten staan.

[Laura Van · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dit boek leerde me veel (vooral de informatie over bomen was nieuw voor me) en stimuleerde me om nog meer en vaker te genieten van de schoonheid van de natuur.

[Lilou · Rating 4 out of 5]

像弗格森这样的作者，其作品的真正魅力不仅与其精湛的讲故事能力有关，而且与他对自然以及我们与周围一切事物的联系的深刻理解有关。读这本书就好像打开一个洞，既可外观，亦可内视，让你看到和你沉湎其中多年的自以为是迥然不同的现实，非常认同作者的这句话，有时候我们人类口中的“世界”只是一个除人以外别无他物的世界，狭小而孤陋，无知又寡闻。我们离大自然很��，却又很远，得学会真正的亲近大自然，漫步在荒野中观察大自然的万物，了解像蚊子，蜘蛛等动植物不为人知的一面，你不必爱上苍蝇，但不妨了解一个事实，苍蝇的体内含有和你体内一样的蛋白质，苍蝇的出现和你我有着一样的偶然性，像你我一样深奥，复杂……从现在起感受自然，自然皆规律，万物皆可爱。

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dit boek heeft me de afgelopen tijd door aardig wat slapeloze nachten heen gesleept: interessante materie, maar niet te spannend. Daarna sliep ik altijd weer lekker in. Van de 8 lessen zou ik er geen één kunnen reproduceren, dus deze mag weer terug op mijn to read lijstje 😅.

[Simone Hollander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zoveel leuke dingen geleerd. Vaker de natuur in!!🦋

[Sarah Mullié · Rating 5 out of 5]

dit is zooo mooi. magisch

[Talitha Custer Longo · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely stunning book. Moving, thought-provoking and beautiful. So glad I finally read it.