Without This, We Shrink

Nature is a part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man.

Beston means something precise. Not scenery. Not escape. He means the felt knowledge that we are permeable, made of the same substance as wind and salt and the slow turn of seasons. When we lose touch with that fundamental kinship, we become smaller. Not sadder necessarily. Smaller. Our sense of what we are contracts. This is not metaphor. The body knows.