All,

We each chose one Nature Thought to share with you today. We hope you get a chance to share them with others.

Happy Earth Day,

Haley and Diane

The Peace of Wild Things

By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Excerpt from The Story of My Boyhood and Youth

“This sudden splash into pure wildness–baptism in Nature’s warm heart–

how utterly happy it made us! Nature streaming into us, wooingly teaching her

wonderful glowing lessons… Here without knowing it we still were at school;

every wild lesson a love lesson. Oh, that glorious Wisconsin wilderness! Young

hearts, young leaves, flowers, animals, the winds and the streams and the

sparkling lake, all wildly, gladly rejoicing together!”