I have come to believe that most of us have experienced some lonely spot, some private nook, some glen or stream-side scene that impressed us so deeply that even today its memory recalls the mood of a lost enchantment. At the age of eighty, my grandmother used to recall with delight a lonely tract she called "Beautiful Big South Woods." There, as a girl one spring day, she had seen the whole floor of the woods, acre on acre, carpeted with the blooms of bloodroot and spring beauties and blue and pink hepaticas. She had seen the woods only once but she never forgot it.
      - Edwin Way Teale, The Lost Woods

When I was about ten years old, I saw a meadow. It was early May and it was filled with wild lilies. That sight, together with the sounds of the crickets and birds — all of this somehow struck me in such a way that ever since then that meadow has become my norm of reality and value. A good economy is one that allows that meadow to survive. Good politics protects that meadow. A good religion is what enabled me to understand the deep mystery in the meadow. . .   
       We need the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers and the mountains and the trees, the flowers, the birds, the song of the birds, the fish in the sea. All of this evokes something in our inner world, evokes a world of mystery. It evokes a world of the sacred and gives us a sense of awe and mystery.  
      - Thomas Berry, from the video The Great Story. There are excerpts from my interview of Tom on the Heron Dance website.