Nature Within And Without

 

Nature Within And Without

In an old chronicle a Shawnee Indian was recorded as saying the landscape that was overtaking his native land was artificial.  For the longest time I believed he meant that nothing was instilled with mystery; the unknown had became lost.  I always thought that this was the way to look at things, trying to find what was ancient or unremembered in the ever changing present.  Sometimes we look no further when a piece of advice is clear and endearing, and so I deplored what this man had deplored only because I respected what he said.  The starting point of someone else's unhappiness is usually the beginning of our own.  We suffer in unison and feel attached because we have taken up another's opinion, reinforcing it with our own distinctions.  After searching for so long and believing everything around me was artificial, that no true landscape existed, I looked back upon that Shawnee from long ago and found that he was not speaking of the outside world.  Everything, he said, was artificial because we can no longer appreciate it as a free spirit.

Douglas Thornton