This is an excerpt from Section One — Calling the Frogs Back:

"Perhaps the imagination is the mediating element between ourselves and all that surrounds us." — Richard Lewis

Stepping into the imagination needs aliveness. The more that our wilderness becomes manufactured and stolen from our lives, the more vapid the human spirit becomes each day. Wandering aimlessly through streets and shops that repeat themselves in place after place breeds a deadly assurance that invades our lives. We have traded the unknown diversity of what is wild for discount outlets, chain stores and huge parking lots. We are at a point where we can travel anywhere and find what is familiar and repetitive but no longer has a unique sense of place. This nowhere that can be found anywhere, divides us from ourselves and destroys the landscape we might call home. This kind of world leaves little for the imagination.

Entering the wilderness is about a wild way to wander in ourselves and be responsive to the unexpectedness of places, the fur and howl of it, the storm and calm of it. Stones speak and all the ancient ones appear to us like steam rising from a lake. They seem to ooze out of the texture of the rocks and hills. These stories ask of us a truth, a natural way to find our own grace and courage in the world. Our imagination knows of this wilderness instinctively and it seeks this territory both outside and inside in order to roam; it is the basis of our ecological imagination.