NATURE-BASED EXPRESSIVE ARTS 131
just visitors passing through, but co-creators in the making of things.
When we open our hearts to the Earth without numbing, distracting
or distancing, we lift the veil of separation. We make contact and
are no longer strangers. We care, and “care is the hallmark of being
human, the ground of holiness” (O’Donohue 2005, p.77) and an
entry into creating wholeness in a fragmented world. We can begin
by learning the names of things around us and the stories they tell
that weave our lives together.
On a recent walk in the Southern Appalachian Highlands,
we met the spring beauties, feathery white flowers that signal to
local farmers the time has come for walking their cows up from
the valleys along the gravel back roads to the high bald pastures
where they’ll summer. Our walk also led us to an old Wolf River
apple tree, hollowed inside but still blooming. We later learned that
neighbors come together each year to gather the organic fruit of this
tree, making apple butter, pie and juice to enjoy throughout the year.
Throughout our time along this woodland trail, we kept noticing a
small and delicate nodding yellow flower with two leaves marked by
oblong brown spots. We learned that this was the trout lily, an edible
and medicinal native plant used both as a contraceptive and as a
diuretic and named for its trout-like brown spots. Our walk was one
of making contact, of naming, of forming a relationship, of learning
and ultimately of falling in love with the land around us. We are
reminded again that anything we love can be saved.
If we are truly open, we embrace the vulnerability suggested
by Rilke (2005), letting everything happen to us, both beauty and
terror. We see not only beauty, but also the ugliness inherent in
environmental degradation, disrespect and exploitation. We cannot
fail to notice or be affected by the decomposing cars, trash-filled
yards, mountainsides stripped bare for mining and trails littered with
trash. Our vulnerability, according to Brown (2012), is the birthplace
of love, belonging, accountability and authenticity and the wellspring
for creating a purposeful and meaningful life. Vulnerability is also
the source of creativity, innovation and change needed to confront