Nature is us.

I’m thinking about inspiration and how creativity happens in our intersections (conscious and unconscious) with the “natural world.”   There are few things more direct in their ability to shift us out of our normal way of interacting with ourselves, others and the “mother of all mothers,” than when faced with a dramatic change in the weather and landscape.  The chemistry of snow, the meteorological fact of snow, pales in comparison to the subtlety, the sublimity of it – the way it can calm and quiet us, and also the way it energizes us and draws us outside to move about in it.  Snow is one of those events that invites us, if we are so inclined, to move beyond “looking” and see, feel the deeper significance of a thing.  How we actually do that is unique to each of us, yet we also share a cellular memory of that significance and are all supported by it as trees in a forest support each other at the roots (to paraphrase Rumi).  When we access the creative process or the result of that process, we are accessing that shared support.  Nature.  Sun comes up.  Snow retreats.  Icicles shed their mass.  Birds, squirrels, worms and humans all go about their daily activities.    Nature is us.