3 Questions

What is a Child?
What is a Book?
What is Nature?

I want to see these questions not as three separate and distinct questions, but as three different ways to ask the same question. Like the stories that have no original, these questions all seem to draw and pull on one another. Book, child, and nature are all, at their very basis, words. Language, based on these words, defines the way we see our world. They form the basis for our numerous views of reality. By naming something, we give it associations and an etymology that signify its meaning. And from these distinct words, we form stories. From great, sacred stories (cultural myths) to fairy tales to news reports, the stories we tell define our view of reality and the world around us. They tell change or enhance the way we see.

A book, then, is a narrative or story in its most literal and tangible form - black words on a white page. But when narrative escapes the page, and enters the imagination it becomes an interactive, oral story that is dynamic, moving, and alive - a child. And when we look out to the world around us and see nature, we are seeing a story that has been told for generations. We see the natural metamorphoses of Ovid, the land to be conquered of the Bible, and even the scientific lab reports of Microbiology and Ecology.

So what is a book, a child, and nature? Words, Language, Story.