The examined natural life — Nasreddin's synthesis

For Nasreddin, nature was not a retreat from life but its ground — the constant beneath the human story, patient and indifferent in the best sense, outlasting every opinion anyone has ever held about it. He spent time outdoors not to escape the village but to remember that the village was very small, the mountains were very old, and the donkey had been right about the path the whole time. The natural life is not the life that returns to the wild; it is the life that never forgets what it is made of.