I picked up a little book today at Muir Woods as I inhaled the smoke from the wood-stove fire. It is by Joseph Cornell and is called "With Beauty Before Me."
Cornell writes: "A teacher in the Southwest once asked the children in his class to draw a picture of themselves. He recalled, "The American children completely covered the paper with a drawing of their body, but my Navajo students drew themselves very differently. They made their bodies much smaller and included the nearby mountains, canyon walls, and dry desert washes. To the Navajo, the environment is as much a part of who they are as their own arms and legs."
It is a lovely way to consider ourselves as we listen to the fall of the rain.