Johnson, Cathy

Cathy Johnson is an Artist and writer, Resident of Missouri. Also the author of Drawing and Painting from Nature, and The Nocturnal Naturalist.

We may imagine ourselves as separate - dominant, somehow, and indomitable. In fact we are as fragile as mayflies. On Becoming Lost, 1990.

 

As a naturalist, wandering is what I do best; it's my stock in trade. Wandering, searching, seeking; rambling along, aimlessly; looking under stones, under bark, underwater. If I were already safely found, settled and complacent, what would be the point of searching at all. Ibid.

 

I cannot be taken alive by timelessness if I am unwilling to ignore time, unless I wait for my captor with a kind of exquisite readiness. I step outside of time as much as I am able; leave the watch at home, give myself room, keep the hour of return deliciously open. I'll be home when you see me coming. Ibid.

 

Naturalists - even of the amateur kind - have an ingrained need for still places and clear, dancing water, for scent of earth and sky and the pungent algal smell of swamps - not gasoline. I need to feel the unrestricted wind blow through me, cleansing as a vision quest. Ibid.

 

The earth weeps rich topsoil in dismay each time it rains. Ibid.