Jillian’s April Post: Connect with the Power of Nature and Your Wild Side

It’s spring! What better time to connect with nature and our "wild side"?

"Living in a natural state." "Not cultivated, tamed, domesticated." These rank among the definitions of wild. It is what is intrinsic to us: our most elemental instincts.

In nature we can shed our outer layers: feel unfettered, free, pure. When we touch this state we feel good: our most essential, authentic selves. Connected to our baser beings, our surroundings, we are receptive, attentive, attuned and, at times, ecstatic. We feel calm, pure of spirit, powerful, engaged, present -- whole.

Nature invites us to shuck our often complex and complicated lives and trappings and return to a more primitive state, return to ourselves.

Author Ed Abbey would urge us to get into nature as much as possible.

And if you can’t walk, sit. Dave, a retired art teacher, who has been described as "a man who lives to love nature" once told a student: "Go into nature and sit for one hour. Watch the light change. Watch it as it moves through the trees. You will learn as much about yourself in that hour as you will learn about nature."

For more ideas for connecting with the power of nature – whether you are traveling to a nearby park, mountain preserve or across the world – visit Change Your Life Through Travel, Chapter 5.