Nature Speaks

The farmhouse kitchen is lit by a single oil lamp. Its glow falls across a rough wooden table where bread, cheese, and late-summer apples are set. Beyond the open window comes the chorus of crickets and the faint sigh of wind through fields.

Four guests have gathered here. Carl Jung, broad-shouldered, his gaze shadowed but steady. Henry David Thoreau, lean and restless, as though he has only paused briefly from his walks around Walden Pond. Mary Oliver, quiet, her presence like still water, a notebook folded beside her plate. And later, Wendell Berry, arriving with soil still on his hands, to complete the company.

For a time, they eat in silence. Then Jung sets down his knife and speaks.

Jung: “We live in abstractions. That is our illness. We mistake intellect for life itself. But the natural man within us rebels. He cannot tolerate a life stripped of instinct, stripped of contact with the soil.”

Thoreau leans forward, eager. “Yes. Our life is frittered away by detail. That is why I went to the woods – to confront only the essential facts. To see if I could not learn what life had to teach. But men multiply their details. They build railroads, then complain they have no time to walk.”

Oliver’s voice is softer, almost hesitant. “And yet the wild still remembers us. I thought the earth remembered me. She took me back so tenderly. Perhaps what matters is not only how we strip away, but how we return. What will we do with our one wild and precious life?”

The words hang in the lamplight like a bell’s tone. Jung studies her face.

Jung: “The wild and the precious are not separate. The psyche seeks wholeness, and wholeness cannot be found in abstractions. It is in earth, in instinct, in the rhythms we have forgotten. We must compensate the earth – and in doing so, we compensate the soul.”

Thoreau gives a sharp laugh. “Compensate the earth? She asks nothing. She gives freely, if we will only leave off our meddling. But men are restless, never content to be still. They must dig, build, expand – always discontent with simplicity.”

Oliver: “And yet we tire of it. We dream of silence, of meadows, of rivers. Perhaps restlessness is the symptom – but the cure is stillness. To pause, to listen.”

At that moment the door opens, and Wendell Berry enters. His hands are rough, the creases in his face deepened by years outdoors. He sits without ceremony, breaking bread before speaking.

Berry: “We forget that the so-called inefficiencies – the farm, the family meal, the small community – are not obstacles but essentials. The future is seeded with the present. If we plant only machines, we will harvest only machines. If we plant gardens and friendships, we will harvest life.”

Jung nods gravely. “Yes. The psyche knows this balance. It rebels when the machine dominates, just as the body rebels when the spirit is starved. Our task is not to refuse progress, but to place it back in service of life.”

Thoreau shakes his head. “Progress! A word for men who cannot be content. I would rather hear the frogs by Walden Pond than a hundred speeches on progress. The problem is not how to use machines, but how to remember we are alive.”

Berry: “And yet we cannot go backward. The tractor is here, the factory, the computer. The question is how to make them serve the common life, rather than erode it.”

Oliver turns the thought gently. “Perhaps it begins in attention. To attend to what is near – the grass, the sparrow, the neighbour. That is already resistance to abstraction. Attention is the beginning of love.”

Jung: “Yes. And love is the root of wholeness. Without it, technology becomes only cold cleverness. With it, even simple acts – planting, baking, listening – become sacramental.”

The lamp flickers. For a while, only the sound of knives on bread. Then Oliver speaks again.

Oliver: “When I am among the trees, they give off such hints of gladness. I almost feel they are waiting for me to notice. Perhaps they remind us that our task is not to dominate, but to belong.”

Jung murmurs, almost to himself: “Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books.”

The silence after this is long, filled with the hum of the night. Finally, Berry breaks it.

Berry: “Belonging. That is the word. The machines promise power, but what we need is belonging. A place to stand, work to share, voices around a table. These are what keep a people human.”

Thoreau looks out the window, where the moon has risen. “I too found belonging – in solitude. A man alone with a pond is not lonely, but rich. Perhaps belonging has many forms.”

Oliver: “Yes. Alone or together, it is the same root. To be present. To live deliberately, as you said, Henry. To remember, as you say, Carl. To plant, as you say, Wendell. The words are different, but the song is one.”

The bread is finished. The lamp burns low. No one speaks further, for nothing more is needed.

Outside, the owl calls again. And the night itself seems to lean in, listening.

The wild remembers. So do you.