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Looks like et lol.
Buford, can you say more? 
Made my evening reading this. Can’t get enough of Buhners stuff and I’m only on his first book. Talk about being reintroduced to nature in such a romantic way…
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“art product”… wow, that was powerful for me, thank you. i’m learning so much from this conversation, thanks everyone!
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How about art as a way to enter into a dialogue with nature? Not to imitate nature through art, but to work directly with the land in collaboration with the materials offered, and the feelings experienced.
Once I followed my feelings to a spot where I felt called to weave the suckers of a maple tree into a tiny bower. Years later I returned to the spot and the bower had grown into a living grotto and I was overwhelmed by the sense of presence there. I could not have created such a thing alone. I believe that same presence called me to the original spot, but with aid of some twisting of branch and vine, along with the passing of time, it only became intensified. To me, this is art.
i know this is a ridiculously late reply to @Nathan_Carlos_Rupley, but i wanted to put my two cents in to see if they could bridge the gap. (had to stop there to change my wording from ‘take a stab at it’ or ‘take a shot at it’ - not what i was going for. thanks, inherently violent language.)
when i’ve read more about the larger shifting of human culture that led us down the path toward civilization, art, ritual, & religion tend to come into play. i think the form of artful existence that most of the folks in this thread are talking about is helpful in a rewilding sense, because it’s one more step toward an active & loving interaction with our environment, full embodiment of selves, and rejection of an ordered, rigid culture. but what i guessed that nathan was getting at was the idea that beginning to call things ‘art’ was one of the first separations from nature. the idea that there was a time before shamans or medicine people, when each person within a social group was still connected enough that no one needed to specialize in healing. a time when everyone was still so thoroughly enmeshed in their plant, animal, mineral community that the idea of representing ‘others’ artistically didn’t seem necessary. and the idea that this step, of humans taking the time to create a thing that’s not them, that’s some ‘other’ (however revered, respected, admired, etc), some Representation of a thing in nature, was one of the early steps toward our separation from fully recognized & lived kinship with our world.
only by making that initial ‘art’, that symbol of a thing, of another being, can we begin to distance ourselves from those beings and our lived relationship with them. this begins to let ideas be formed & exist About a being separate from the living creature/being itself. this is one of the trickiest questions of our social history for me, because there’s a lot of beauty & wonder to be seen in lovingly created representations, but i can also follow the lines of thought that show it as a precursor to emotional distancing & the beginning of humans as ‘other than’.
so; seeing this perspective on a spectrum of human culture, in general i see embodied art, or artful living, as helpful to most people, especially if they’re actively focused on rewilding. and i can also easily see art used as a tool (either consciously by an individual or wielded Against individuals by others) to pacify people, to tell them ‘yes, you are not alone in this feeling’, while the sneaky background voice continues… ‘and that comfort will be enough to keep you happy, to keep you from acting, from fully rising up’
so i see a double edged sword. i see the possibility of a healing balm during times of trauma, but also the possibility of a healing balm applied that sedates us when at times we should instead be rising up in resistance. i see a tool for powerful connection & understanding, that supports empathy, connection, & embodiment in the living world, & also a tool that was one of the earliest steps we took away from that complete embodiment. in our present state, i think it’s mostly beneficial, because of how far gone this world is. as long as we’re not allowing it to keep us back from that forefront of our lives, where we can make whatever daily push our spirit rises up and tells us to fight for.
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Thanks, I don’t really check in here much, but reading this was inspiring.