(note: this has nothing to do with the Lou Reed song, it just happens to be stuck in my head this morning, and seemed appropriate for the subject at hand.)
Get outside today and touch something.
It doesn’t have to be dramatic, and you don’t have to tell anyone you’re doing it. Just take 5 minutes, get outside, and engage your sense of touch in the natural world. Feel its wildness, or tameness, or both. Touch the bark of a tree – is it rough or smooth, warm from the sun or cool or cold? Touch the ground – is it warming in the early spring, or snow-covered, or frozen hard?
See if you can find the wild side, there in your neighborhood or backyard or courtyard. We often put nature into idyllic boxes, only seeing the tamed versions that surround us in cities and neighborhoods and parks, idealizing what is truly an often chaotic force, but the wild side is still there.
See if you can feel it, underneath the quiet exterior.
What is that like?
Little Druid on the Prairie 