Becoming a Maverick Genius

For 35 years I have learned to reconnect with nature by extensively living outdoors throughout the seasons aided by knowledge gained from my studies in biology, education and psychology. These experiences sustain in me a resonating chamber. It allows me to know nature in reasonable words and thoughts arising from intimate contact with nature's wisdom and beauty. What I share in my methods and materials is that knowledge, not the tainted product of the same 35 years that I ordinarily might have spent in stress, mistrust and chaos that ordinarily warps life at home, work and school.

When I went to sleep outside in a forest by the bay last night, I thought about this article and the many facets of reconnecting with nature. I heard geese flying and singing, raccoons splashing around and the wind in the trees. As brilliant stars burned above, a deer walked by my bedside. I woke up with the sun this morning with one word in mind: salt. Fascinating, isn't it? This article has nothing to do with salt. Why salt? Because I know of an infant who said the word salt very early in life, long before he could say anything else. He said salt many times, but nothing else, just salt. Then he died and the autopsy revealed the cause of death to be a salt deficiency.

To me, the message in "Salt" is clear. Last night, sleeping outdoors helped me to tell you about that child. As I describe reconnecting with nature to you, what I describe may cause you to wonder, just like you would wonder if you heard that infant say salt. You see, nature is an act of God. It is a marvelous intelligence, one that sustains our living planet, yet one we have little use for. Nature's maverick genius signaled the word salt to me so that I could convey that infant's plight to you. Nature sends such signals to us continuously. We neither receive nor use them because we spend our lives disconnected from nature.

Sometimes dealing with nature's sensory impact on us makes people think they are disturbed, or the world is crazy. For example, they want to be happy, but they are not. I reverse the process. I teach educational sensory nature activities that enable people to thoughtfully reconnect with nature's incredible genius, beauty and integrity. Responsible thinking and relationships result from this process. I even teach this process globally through the internet, folks get academic credit for learning it from training manuals. It is that simple.

Reconnecting with nature activities let nature say "salt" to you and to others in every field of endeavor. The activities enable you to know how and why you may locate, respect and respond to nature's wisdom, a wisdom we each biologically inherit, one that enriches every minute of our lives as we become conscious of it. Our leaders will not teach you this skill, Yale and Harvard don't teach it. However you may easily learn it, as I did, directly from nature itself, in your backyard, park or back country. Without a majority of us having this skill, we ignore vital personal and global knowledge that sustains Earth's and our personal natural integrity.

The science and art of reconnecting with nature is worth learning. It can avoid disorders, pain and death like the salt deficient child suffered. You see, he suffered due to people's lack of knowledge about his deficiency. Our alarming negative social and environmental indicators show that we are nature deficient. We can learn to hear a wise and helpful cry from nature within and around us. We can learn how to consider it and respond to its creative guidance. But, if you listen hard, you will not hear nature saying the word "salt." It says, instead, the word love. It says we suffer a deficiency of love and it says how and where that love may be found in natural areas. Nature reconnecting activities help you find it there.

Mike Cohen's is the author of "Reconnecting With Nature: A restoration of the missing link in Western thinking " He may be contacted at POB 1605 Friday Harbor, WA 98250 USA 360-378-6313