The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly, light would elucidate the most difficult truths, wind would sweep away obtuse padding.

~ Gretel Ehrlich

Gretel Ehrlich Art Nature Writing

The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly, light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding. Finally, the lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.

~ Gretel Ehrlich

Gretel Ehrlich Nature Nature Writing

Love life first, then march through the gates of each season; go inside nature and develop the discipline to stop destructive behavior; learn tenderness toward experience, then make decisions based on creating biological wealth that includes all people, animals, cultures, currencies, languages, and the living things as yet undiscovered; listen to the truth the land will tell you; act accordingly.

~ Gretel Ehrlich

Gretel Ehrlich Inspirational Life Nature

The toughness I was learning was not a martyred doggedness, a dumb heroism, but the art of accommodation. I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.

~ Gretel Ehrlich

Gretel Ehrlich Inspirational Strength

The lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness, despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.

~ Gretel Ehrlich

Gretel Ehrlich Grief Life Lessons Loss

Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still.

~ Gretel Ehrlich

Gretel Ehrlich Life Analogies Nature Self

Walking is also an ambulation of mind.

~ Gretel Ehrlich

Gretel Ehrlich Flâneur Thinking Walking

Animals hold us to what is present: to who we are at the time, not who we’ve been or how are bank accounts describe us. What’s obvious to an animal is not the embellishment that fattens our emotional resumes but what’s bedrock and current in us: aggression, fear, insecurity, happiness, or equanimity. Because they have the ability to read our involuntary ticks and scents, we’re transparent to them and thus exposed—we’re finally ourselves.

~ Gretel Ehrlich

Gretel Ehrlich Animals Emotion Identity