Perception and Appreciation - Charlie Smallshaw

 I found the discourse about how the encounter of nature and the subsequent assignment of value can open one's eyes to their place in the world. I like how this section talks about seeing something like a tree and distinguishing it from the others as worthy of attention, which only means that the perceived tree will simply lose its value as soon as the hiker walks out of site of it. It contrasts this idea with the perception of the forest, or rather the trees as a collective who work within a larger, complex and beautiful system. People can recognize themselves as part of this system, or circuit, as the book describes, to open them up to possibilities for social interaction. This reminded me a lot of the Gaia hypothesis, which says that the Earth and all of its organisms are one system whose actions conversely affect one another.

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