Category › Biophilia

[This post supplements chapter 9 of Connect with Nature] One of the great challenges facing humanity is how to live in harmony with one another, and with other living things. If history and the daily news are any guide, division is humanity’s default condition. ‘Us-and- them’ rather than ‘us-together’ competes strongly to be our species’ […]

(This post supplements material in Chapter 7 of ‘Connect with Nature’) It is an experience that left a lasting impression on me. My wife, Margaret, and I had walked up to the rounded peak of the volcanic remnant we knew then as Mt Dromedary. At 800 metres above sea-level, the mountain overlooks part of the […]

Here’s me on what is becoming an annual pilgrimage to savour the flowering New South Wales waratahs (Telopea speciosissima) in Bottle Forest, part of the Royal National Park near Sydney. I was in the company of family and dozens of others on much the same mission. This pocket of waratahs attracts hundreds, probably thousands, of visitors […]

(This post supplements material in Chapter 8 of ‘Connect with Nature’.) Michael Portillo is probably best known for his TV documentaries on railway journeys, but Australia’s SBS network is currently screening a series recording a walking trip he did in Devon and Cornwall.  In contrast to his upbeat railway documentaries, this series is more personal, […]

(This post supplements material in Chapter 11 of Connect with Nature). I recounted in my last post how a couple of doses of nature in the form of visits to my village gardens ‘cured’ me of a case of nature deprivation brought on by a long hospital stay. The visits, or at least the opportunity […]

(Material in this post supplements Chapter 12 of Connect with Nature) The death occurred on December 26, 2021 of Professor Edward O Wilson, an acclaimed biologist, foremost naturalist and pioneering thinker. Widely regarded as Charles Darwin’s successor, Wilson transformed my understanding of myself, others and what it means to be human. My writing over the […]

Recently, I had an experience that was memorable, but like many I have had before. Despite COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, my wife, Margaret, and I were able to go for a walk in a nearby coastal national park.

This is the fourth post in a series on my pet subject, nature connectedness. I said in the previous post that we need to be nature-connected if we are to live well and to flourish.