WILD Intelligence

ELIZABETH DENLEY is currently living in the Central Highlands of Victoria in Australia, surrounded by natural forest. Why is this experience of living so close to Nature worth sharing? It has reawakened a more natural wild intelligence in her, the wild intelligence she remembers from childhood, which offers solutions to the current crises humanity faces

The stillness of the predawn is mystical. Stars start to fade as colors gently emerge, the dawn erupting into a genesis of gratitude. Tangerine peeps through the eastern canopy, kookaburras light the world with their laughter, and the various levels of awakening find their counterpoint.

It rained during the night, so eucalypt fragrance is heady in the cold air. The majestic stringybark gums sing their morning serenade, with their many shades of grey, green, honey, apricot, and new reddish leaves high above. These sentinels are home to a myriad of insects, birds and mammals in a vertical ecosystem that connects Cosmos and Earth.

Outside the back window of the cottage, a gray kangaroo leans against a big old tree stump scratching his shoulder, his comical movements bringing the

first smile of the morning. The stump he leans against is alive, despite being all that's left of a grandmother tree that fell many months ago during a massive storm. She continues to be fed and cared for by her surrounding siblings and offspring.

The consciousness of trees is so evident here. They move with the sun and respond to the weather, to music, to human emotions. They create beautiful atmospheres, just as they did for our ancestors when sacred groves were our first temples, celebrating the joy of nature.

The biologist David Haskell expresses it well: "To listen to trees, nature's great connectors, is to learn how to inhabit the relationships that give life its source, substance, and beauty."