I recently had the opportunity to hear Jon Young speak about his nature connectedness workshops at the Kalleiopeia Foundation in Marin County. Jon is famous for his connection to John Brown Jr. and his subsequent work as a cultural mentor. In my opinion, he’s pretty much one of the coolest people in the field of being wild. Not only does he have an unparalleled understanding of the natural world, but a Jersey accent and he’s funny to boot.

The main take-away for me from the talk was one statement he made about curiosity: “Curiosity leads to passion, and passion leads to Vision.” After that I went home and ‘got curious’ with some friends by walking through the park aimlessly. Later in the week I took my dog for a long walk through golden gate park, with no goal or destination, just a long walk. It wasn’t an enlightening experience or anything, but it was interesting to see how hard it was to walk without a destination and how much I learned along the way about the park, the birds and the plants. Some people might see this pursuit as anti-intellectual, but I challenge that there is more to learn about the natural world than anything in our ‘real’ human world and you need a boat-load of curiosity to get that knowledge.

Young’s belief is that if you allow your curiosity to blossom, leading you wherever you want to go, you’ll find something to be passionate about. Once you find passion, you’ll eventually receive a vision of what you can do with your life. That’s basically the path I’m trying to follow now. My curiosity is leading me right now into the wild to where I hope to find a piece of passion. In the more common, less wild world, curiosity leads people into all sorts of industries. It’s basically just good practice to inspire curiosity in kids and get them to be ‘life-long learners’, right? It’s a simple idea with powerful ramifications. Curiosity is something that can start companies, create whole industries and change our economy.

Curiosity, not just for kids anymore!

A thought occurred to me the other day while driving through the redwoods in Humboldt county. I was en route to Portland, OR for work and play and while looking at those massive trees of the Lost Coast I realized the efficiency with which nature produces food. Sure, this is no new thought, but consider all the waste we humans produce; the pacific trash gyre, landfills, oil spills and more waste every day.

Now consider all the waste nature produces….none. Everything is used and useful. Fallen leaves return their nutrients to the Earth to be soaked up again. Ok, maybe rocks, coal and oil are ‘useless’ by any natural process (and perhaps humans have evolved to use these useless items). But considering all the activity in the natural world, all the living and dying, growth and expansion, there is very little put to waste. Everything becomes food for something else. Wouldn’t it be great if people could find ways to be as efficient as nature?