Lose your mind, come to your senses

Dear readers and writers,

I saw the headline phrase, "Lose your mind, come to your senses," in a newsletter from Mission Trails Regional Park in San Diego.  My Environmental Literature class will be visiting there on a field trip Oct 6, and I'm trying to prepare.  But I couldn't concentrate after noticing this phrase.  It's close to a summary of what we are finding in our readings.  Turn off your city mind, your analytics, your skepticism, irony, cynicism, armor of any kind...lose your mind, that carefully cultivated and trained asset you are so proud to possess.  Instead, simply open your senses (come to your senses), let the world of nature talk with you, spice your air, chime in with insect rhythms, slay you with the red of a single poppy as happened to Ovid in The Imaginary Life, captivate you with leathery skin of a skink or brushy soft bristles of a fuzzy caterpillar, titillate your taste buds with the flavor of turmeric and coriander or just the green grass sap from a freshly plucked off stem.  So many sensory impulses nature would give us if we only could come to our senses.  Yes, this phrase is going to be my new mantra.  I don't really want to permanently lose my mind but it can hibernate for periods while I reconnect to the fibers of nature, its sensory bonanza.  I wish that for you too, and hope you're somewhere that it's possible to get a nature sensory blast every once in a while.  Of course it's trite to say it will blow your mind, so perhaps I'll say it'll blow out the cobwebs of your mind with the wind you let in when you lose your mind in this way.

Enjoy!  Laura
Photo credit: Wikipedia/Creative Commons, with thanks.  Originally taken by Eric Hill.