My first encounter with natural delight changed my life. I ended up leaving my parish ministry in North Carolina to move to the United Kingdom. Since then, I’ve gone out into wildernesses and the countryside with increasing regularity, spending as much time as I responsibly can soaking in the natural world and learning how to delight.
One’s circle of disturbance is inversely proportional to the size of one’s circle of perception. If you are only aware of what is immediately around you, then you will be more apt to frighten animals you don’t see with your ruckus. There is a spiritual lesson in all of this.
I am an avid hunter and fisherman, but it strikes me that these activities are really more occasions for something else: for looking at the natural world and trying to understand it and, by trying to understand it.