In our last episode, we had a conversation with an astrophysicist, learning how to see nature,

this created, beautiful, rich world as a scientist. And in today's episode, we'll meet another

scientist, this one, a botanist, who will help us to see nature as one community of interconnected living beings.

I know you're going to enjoy this conversation.

The first time I ever went to a library and checked out a book on mysticism. I read the introduction to this

book by the poet Auden, W.H. Auden. And I remember he talked about the mystical experience

very often having to do with a sense of the interconnectedness and oneness of all things.

I know some people when they hear the word mystical or mysticism,

they think about visions of angels or some ecstatic frenzy.

But I really appreciate what Auden said, and he's right, that for many people, this experience

of the connectedness of all things, the deep unity, the deep holes, W-H-O-L-E-S that we're all part of,

that this insight comes often very quietly,

and sometimes it even comes through the study of science.

Today, you're going to meet a botanist who also just loves the outdoors

and loves the natural world.

And through both her science and her walking of the earth,

she has become a person who feels that deep interconnectedness. I hope you'll get a deeper sense

of what she and so many have come to see in this episode of learning how to see.

One of my favorite places on earth over the last 10 or 12 years has been a place called Ring Lake Ranch in the high desert of Wyoming in the Wind River Valley.

And when I was there several years ago, I took a hike in the Badlands near Ring Lake Ranch with a botanist.

And as we walked along through what a lot of people would see as a harsh environment, even in some ways a lunar kind of environment, and people would think there

wasn't much life there at all. This person guiding our hike, this botanist, helped us not only

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