I've been taking pictures of rocks for seventy-some days now.  It started as a way to document the 365 stones.  I see patterns in the rocks, both in the way they are made and the way I arrange them.  If nature could speak, I doubt she would tell us something important in the stripes on a rock.  More likely, the patterns I record are a reflection of something within me, my response to the act of examining nature closely.

One way that Nature might speak to us could be the discord we feel in our everyday lives.  We have taken up a position of spoiler.  It's like, when you are having a quiet conversation with a friend, enjoying common interests and sharing memories, and an acquaintance barges in and takes over, talking at length about herself and showing no interest in you except as an audience.  Humans are that loud, obnoxious, clueless person, as far as the biosphere is concerned.  For billions of years, organism traded information through their actions, maintaining an equilibrium.  Along came modern humans, and they said, From now on, everything is about us.  Nature has no value or purpose unless it serves human wealth, consumption, or entertainment.

Although we are taking everything we want or need from nature, it is certainly possible if not likely that we feel a deep dread and unease because of our roll as gluttons, taking all for ourselves and leaving none for others.  This could be nature's way of telling us something's wrong.  We are nature, or at least we were natural for most of our evolution.  Only recently have we taken ourselves out of nature, set ourselves apart.  My grandparents grew up on farms, among forests, among animals.  My great-great-grandparents traveled from Indiana to Denver in a covered wagon, completely surrounded by wilderness.  I grew up playing on vacant lots, down by the creek.  I played in the woods that eventually became Eagle Landing Park.  My nephew will not have a chance to play on a vacant lot, and the only nature experience he can have is in a public park, with the beer cans, used condoms, and dog waste.