let be

occasionally there will be a study trying to quantify just how much money nature saves us by simply being itself. what would it costs us in effort, treasure, and ingenuity if we had to replace the sun’s energy, or fertilize all of our food by hand, or farm our woods and waters. or store the nutrients the soil absorbs and apply them correctly. it’s mind boggling to think about, and it makes working with nature, instead of trying to improve her, seem like such a sensible idea. let gravity be gravity and find ways to minimize how much we need to fight it. in the same way, i sometimes think about how much more work i’d have to do if nature didn’t blossom, grow, age, and die so overwhelmingly picturesquely. think about trying to engineer the shapes and faded colors of these flowers and stems that reached their current state, literally, by sitting in a flat file drawer for a few months, completely ignored.

photo of all the dried botanical bits in my flat-file drawer