11 Comments

Such a wonderful post and poem, Tara. And so true about nature. I am forever grateful that I grew up a country kid because it helped shape my understanding of the complexities of the world. Although, my nature meant I fought a bit of nature in favor of my favorites. 😉

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Thanks, Petra. And yes, we certainly tried to "rescue" certain friends from the natural way of things. Sometimes we were even successful.

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Beautiful! I love that nature shows us plainly that we are not meant to live in the binary. For it is both the most beautiful while also being the most devastating and everything in between. This is the first year we don't have nesting hawks in our oaks, and it just dawned on us they won't be returning because all of the young died last year. The realization broke my heart only to turn around and find 5+ monarch caterpillars munching away getting ready to transform! Nature, like us, is all of the things.

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I am finding it really hard these days to be a consumer of news because it feels to me like in every instance either the news outlet or the people on whom they are reporting (or both!) are engaging in oversimplified black and white thinking. I feel like we are turning away from nuance and hard conversations and from not always knowing exactly what we think, in favor of easy to phrase opinions that do more to denigrate others than elucidate what we believe. I'm am finding very little solace anywhere. But nature forces us to see that very little in life is simple, or black and white, and teaches us how to live with that. We need more nature, and less b.s. Thanks, as ever, for reading.

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I feel this, completely. We can't let these short-form video applications dictate our ability to communicate, and they absolutely are. Everything is a sound-bite. Thank you for sharing that with me. ❤️

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Oh this is so beautiful.

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💔

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This is so powerful, all of it, the essay before and the poem. The images are so vivid I felt like i was right there with you. And what powerful lessons to learn, to keep learning. It seems like I have to keep learning the same ones at a still deeper level all the time.

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LeeAnn, thanks so much for reading and for the kind, supportive comment. I really appreciate your perspective. 💙

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Lovely, Tara! That last line is really gorgeous.

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Beautiful Tara, love the prose intro too for context.

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