“Nature is the art of God.”—Sir Thomas Browne

“Deep inside, we still have a longing to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination, our language, our song and dance, our sense of the divine.” — Janine M. Benyus

In my new book, E-Cubed, there’s an experiment I call “Nature vs. News.” The idea is that the natural world has important messages to share.

So needless to say, I’m getting lots of “messages” about this very topic.

Spirit, Southwest Airline’s inflight magazine, just ran a story about Scott Harrison, a woodcarver in Nederland, Colorado who built a Carousel of Happiness.

But he wasn’t always so happy.

After a tour in Vietnam ended abruptly after seven months (his knee was shredded by a grenade), he was airlifted out of the battlefield and returned to an America that as he says, “wouldn’t look a soldier in the eye.”

To cope, he drank, took drugs and “isolated.” After getting a degree at the University of Texas, he migrated to San Jose, California where he worked in a boatyard, eventually building himself a 32-foot schooner.

In his continuing effort to avoid human contact, he sailed alone, deep into the Pacific. He was out of his mind, sobbing with grief and remorse, hoping for a big storm to capsize his boat and put him out of his misery.

Instead, on the 8th day at sea, a 30-foot whale surfaced beside his boat and swam beside him for three or four hours.

For reasons he can’t explain, he says, “It made me feel loved in a way I’d never been loved before.”

In fact, as the whale looked him in the eye, he got the message loud and clear: “You belong among the living.”

He sailed back to California and has never been the same.

The second story comes from Larry Dossey’s new book, One Mind. Evidently on April 14, 1865, the night Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in the Ford Theater, his dog, Jib, was back at the White House where the president’s aides couldn’t figure out why the normally calm and quiet pooch was running in frenzy. No matter what they tried, they couldn’t calm him. He ran in circles until finally he collapsed on a rug near the President’s desk. Somehow, Jib knew his master was in trouble long before the aides finally got wind that their boss had been shot.

So, as I suggest in the book, it might be time to spend more time listening to nature’s Divine Buzz than to the messages on those four-inch screens.

Pam Grout is the author of 17 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the soon-to-be-released sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment is your Full-time Gig.