We've all been touched by nature's beauty in our lives. Through his latest book,
"The Sky and Earth Touched Me," Joseph Cornell invites us to enter deeply into the heart of nature and to breath in her essence through restorative exercises that help us feel a sense of wholeness within ourselves and the world around us.
Tamarack Song, wilderness guide and student of the Old Way has beautifully and graciously written an introduction to The Sky and Earth Touched Me that conveys the depth of inspiration that this book offers.
Introduction by Tamarack Song
We turn to nature for solace, inspiration, beauty, and mystery. We came from nature, and to nature we return. Yet how well do we truly know Her?
Many of us have become good technical naturalists. We have studied nature and can score well on a test, and some of us can successfully track an animal. Yet we struggle to come from the heart—we have little or no intuitive connection. We have lost a shade of what it is to be human.
The Sky and Earth Touched Me is for those who don’t want to wait until death to return to nature—who want to drink in her essence and feel in their marrow what it is like to be one with the mountains and waters and all living things. Here Joseph Bharat Cornell takes us on a deeply engaging guided journey to become a participant in the play of nature rather than a back-row observer.
This is not just another book on animal behavior or nature stories: Joseph gently helps us shed what separates us from nature. He then shows us how to embrace the soul of nature and let Her soul embrace us.
Rather than strolling through the woods, we become the woods. No longer will we have to be content with catching only occasional glimpses of animals—we will find that they are more relaxed around us, more willing to go about their normal lives while we watch. With each exercise, we feel less and less estranged from nature and more as though we’ve renewed an old and soul-satisfying relationship.
If you are new to nature immersion experiences, I encourage you not to skip around in the book, but to start with the exercises in Part One. With Forest Bathing, Nature and Me, and Expanding Circles, you’ll learn to see with fresh eyes. You’ll have undreamed-of experiences of being touched by the Sky and Earth.
Joseph states in the introduction to Part Two, "as we become inspired by nature's wildness and beauty, we naturally want others to also feel uplifted by nature." One of my favorite exercises is Camera—where two people become one, and one with nature, as they enter the silence and mentally photograph the affecting scenes before them.
Part Three brings it all home by showing us how silence connects us all, how to make our idealism practical, and how to live in oneness with nature here and now. As Joseph concludes, “The world didn’t need changing—I needed changing.” We discover the part of us that is a part of everything—the essence of us that is wise, precious, and beautiful.
Tamarack Song has been a student of the Old Way since his early youth. He is the author of Entering the Mind of the Tracker and Song of Trusting the Heart. Tamarack founded Teaching Drum Outdoor School, home of the Wilderness Guide Immersion Program, the only wilderness-living experience of its kind.
