The new tagline for AnOutdoorEducation is “Stories from Nature”. As I turn my attention toward making this site more useful, content-rich and engaging, some of the older posts already feel a bit wordy and outdated.

So I hope to rekindle your interest by simplifying things. Just “three little words”, as the Nat King Cole song suggests, are enough to convey a great deal.

So my goal is to explore each term –story, nature, and from– singly and in combination, to expose somewhat cryptic aspects of their underlying concepts, and finally, to explore lessons that these terms may hold for us.

This undertaking is particularly important in the current political turmoil that threatens our own very existence. And while I do not intend to focus here on political issues per se, disturbance and corruption of our natural world are simply impossible to ignore.

Let’s begin with the middle word –from. It sits between the other two, both of which are capitalized. The middle spot suggests that “from” connotes a relationship. But looking closer, “from” can indicate many different types of relationships.

1. We say, “I come from Alabama with a banjo…” to indicate a place of origin, a source, if you will.
2. To indicate a specific time period or reflect the passage of time, we say, “The dance will take place from 8pm until midnight.” Or: “The daffodils normally bloom from early May until mid-June.” Finally, “From here to kingdom come!” indicates (by exaggeration) something that lasts forever.
3. From can also indicate likeness or dissimilarity: “Oh, all those darn yellow meadow flowers… it’s impossible to tell one from another!” “Can you explain how to tell a moth from a butterfly?”
4. Back to the dance example: “He was only 16, but I couldn’t stop Billy from drinking the rum punch” indicates (intended) exclusion.
5. And finally, causation: “Billy had a few glasses of punch and got sick from the alcohol.”

So what does it mean when we say “Stories from Nature”? This usage suggests many things: 1 (place of origin), 2 (time period), 3 (natural vs unnatural), 4 (attempts to control nature) and 5 (causes of natural phenomena). If we consider 1 and 5 together, nature offers some special meanings of from: genetic causes, biological origins (crossbreeding), disease vectors (viruses or bacteria), and environmental conditions that induce, limit or foster particular outcomes.

From covers a whole gamut of things, from A to Z, including the way natural processes normally work, what happens when humans interfere, by overproduction, modification, or disruption of natural balance.

Comments on Stories and thoughts about Nature will be added soon.