Rebel Nature

Why Wild Places You Will Never See Still Matter

Christopher Grant Ward — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 05:35:00 -0800

In this episode I go on the trail, and off the trail to the highest lake in California, Lake Tulayino. I read my journal entries aloud as I go, and give you my perspective and what i am thinking about as I immerse myself in the wild country. Humanity needs to know that there are wild places that we are preserving. We need to know that we haven't consumed the entire world with our obsessive compulsion for technology and civilization and progress. There's always going to be a part of us that longs for simple, wild places, and even if we never visit them, it gives us some comfort to know they exist. Exist. This is the existence value of things. The value of things never seen never visited and yet admired and loved.

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Credits

Support for Rebel Nature in part by an affiliate partnership with Blick Art Supplies Produced and managed by Quail Run Studios Original Music written and recorded by Christopher Grant Ward. Any commercial music used in this episode has been licensed for airplay by the Harry Fox Agency, 40 Wall St. NY NY You can learn more about me and my art at christophergrantward.com

When Nature Shows You That Every Moment Counts

Christopher Grant Ward — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 11:26:00 -0800

I'm sharing this special episode of Rebel Nature today so you know, how very special your life is. For this week, you are one of the only human lifetimes chosen to witness an incredibly rare traveler put on a show.

It turns out, perhaps once every 80,000 years, that comet unceremoniously named Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (can we just call it Atlas?) permits us the most rare of privileges to grace its presence.

It's so mathematically rare that YOU are the one of the rare lives who has the chance to see Atlas complete its trip. 4 in 3000 human generations got this chance to witness this rare traveler. You are most certainly meant to see it, to be affected by its mere existence and, thus, to hear its silent message. Nature occasionally shakes perspective and scale back into our fragile frames.

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How Nature Moves Us, In Rough Electric Shocks

Christopher Grant Ward — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 10:10:00 -0800

This is Part 1 of several journal entries I made as I hiked the Sierras over the last few years. I was asked to retell some of these stories as an alternative to the explorations of science and history thus far on Rebel Nature. I hope you enjoy this departure and find a 1st person account of deep backcountry experience worthwhile.

***Credits***

Support for Rebel Nature in part by an affiliate partnership with Blick Art Supplies
Produced and managed by Quail Run Studios
Original Music written and recorded by Christopher Grant Ward.
Any commercial music used in this episode has been licensed for airplay by the Harry Fox Agency, 40 Wall St. NY NY
You can learn more about me and my art at christophergrantward.com

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Lose Your Balance to Find Your Harmony

Christopher Grant Ward — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0800

What has compelled humans to seek out perfection and symmetry throughout history, and why symmetry doesn’t necessarily equal beauty? Finally, what is to be gained by embracing the real world, the natural asymmetrical world that we are actually hardwired to love and appreciate. It turns out, your home, your style, your life can very well benefit from the harmony, peace and wonder that exists in the arrangement of things that are not in mirror balance, but perfect all the same.

https://www.christophergrantward.com/blog/lose-your-balance-to-find-your-harmony

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Make your voice heard

We benefit from many voices, and I want you to make yours heard — literally. New technology now allows me to add your comments, thoughts and opinions retroactively to this episode, so your voice can be added to the podcast you are listening to right now. This way, future listeners of this episode can benefit from your experience as well as my own. Add your voice to this podcast for all to hear. To submit a comment to be considered for airplay, message me at hello@christophergrantward.com

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How Have You Constructed Your World?

Christopher Grant Ward — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0800

*You can get the Merlin app here: https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/

Look at the world around you. Virtually everything you see has been created. Our lives are full of things, of inventions. We humans love to invent things, for convenience, efficiency and enjoyment. But, when do these things truly help us, and when can they harm us? Sometimes inventions unintentionally create negative consequences, and sometimes they unintentionally create positive outcomes. However, it turns out, it's how we use inventions, and not the inventions themselves, that creates the opportunity for benefit or harm. Setting boundaries with the invented world is more important than ever. Nature is perhaps the last place we can go, that is not of your own construction.

Credits

Support for Rebel Nature in part by an affiliate partnership with Blick Art Supplies

Produced and managed by Quail Run Studios

Original Music written and recorded by Christopher Grant Ward.

Any commercial music used in this episode has been licensed for airplay by the Harry Fox Agency, 40 Wall St. NY NY

You can learn more about me and my art at christophergrantward.com

Mentioned in this episode:

Credits

What is Your Experience With Nature?

Christopher Grant Ward — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 06:30:00 -0800

I't never too late to contribute to this episode. Even a year later!

I want to hear from you. What are your favorite, most memorable experiences in Nature? Where do you retreat to again and again? Who do you go with, or do you go alone? I can't wait to hear.

If you've always wanted to hear your voice on a podcast, now is your chance! Even if you're listening a year after this broadcast, you can still contribute! Send me a text or audio file to hello@christophergrantward.com We will UPDATE this actual episode to include your story. You can post anonymous if you'd like.

The vision of Rebel Nature is a community of people who can share their experiences with the outside world, and realize that they are not alone with their struggle to fit in the modern world.

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What Do Animal Minds Teach Us About Ourselves?

Christopher Grant Ward — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 02:00:00 -0800

Photos, notes and research links for this episode can be found here. https://www.christophergrantward.com/blog/animals

Whales mourn. Dolphins play. Orcas have dialects. Parrots can ask existential questions. Rats giggle and tickle each other. Birds give their children names. Fish create art. Do we honestly still believe we are the only ones on planet Earth to feel our complex emotions, think deeply, and have fully conscious and aware lives? What does a survey of the current knowledge of the animal kingdom tell us about ourselves and the human attributes we find so valuable.

By the end of this episode, you’ll understand how other animals have many of our abilities and traits, how some animals far surpass our abilities, and the one attribute that actually unites the animal kingdom. You will see how our human perspective on ‘thought’ is just one interpretation, and you may be humbled to learn that animals have superpowers of mind and body that we could only dream of. By peering into the souls of these beautiful creatures, and comparing them with our own, you’ll gain a better understanding of what it actually means to think, communicate, and most importantly, what it means to feel. It turns out that it is not a language, nor how we think, but perhaps emotion, that is the beautiful commonality that binds the animal kingdom together.

——— CREDITS ———

Support for Rebel Nature in part by an affiliate partnership with Blick Art Supplies

Produced and managed by Quail Run Studios

Original Music written and recorded by Christopher Grant Ward.

Any commercial music used in this episode has been licensed for airplay by the Harry Fox Agency, 40 Wall St. NY NY

Any research or primary audio in this episode has been credited in the video and also in the links here: https://www.christophergrantward.com/blog/animals

You can learn more about me and my art at christophergrantward.com

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How This One Invention Made You Regret Wasting Time

Christopher Grant Ward — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 01:00:00 -0800

Photos, notes and research links for this episode can be found here. https://www.christophergrantward.com/blog/time

________

We feel stressed for not having enough time and guilty for wasting it. In modern life, the clock makes time a commodity, an asset, to be spent or saved. Clocks now define Time, not the other way around, and we just follow along. And meanwhile, time is our past, present and future, it defines our lives

So if life is defined by time, and time is driven by the clock, then in many ways it is the clock that drives our lives. But what if there was another way to be? What if notions of “saving”, “spending” or “wasting” time don’t really even make sense?

By the end of this episode, you’ll understand how you were naturally meant to perceive time, and how modern life, with its clocks and calendars, robs us of the attention we need to enjoy the passage of time. And finally, we’ll see how Nature helps us reclaim our focus and attention.

——— CREDITS ———

Support for Rebel Nature in part by an affiliate partnership with Blick Art Supplies

Produced and managed by Quail Run Studios

Original Music written and recorded by Christopher Grant Ward.

Any commercial music used in this episode has been licensed for airplay by the Harry Fox Agency, 40 Wall St. NY NY

You can learn more about me and my art at christophergrantward.com

Make your voice heard! We benefit from many voices, and I want you to make yours heard — literally. New technology now allows me to add your comments, thoughts and opinions retroactively to this episode, so your voice can be added to the podcast you are listening to right now. This way, future listeners of this episode can benefit from your experience as well as my own. Add your voice to this podcast for all to hear. To submit a comment to be considered for airplay, message me at hello@christophergrantward.com

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Credits

How Your Words Control The Way You See The World

Christopher Grant Ward — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0800

Photos, notes and research links for this episode can be found here. https://www.christophergrantward.com/blog/blue

——— SUMMARY ———

A word for the color blue wasn't always around. Written in 750 BC, Homer's Odyssey does not contain the word for blue. Perhaps because Blue is rare in the animal kingdom. So often it's just a trick of light in the natural world.

Perhaps because it was so incredibly difficult for humans to create a blue artificial pigment? Only when we finally could create blue did we give it a name.

So what did we see before we saw Blue? And what else does Nature teach us about the rules of language that guide how we perceive the natural world?

——— CREDITS ———

• "Blue" by Eiffel65 has been licensed for airplay by the Harry Fox Agency, 40 Wall St. NY NY

• Support for Rebel Nature in part by Blick Art Supplies

• Produced by Quail Run Studios

• Original script and music by Christopher Grant Ward

• Learn more about the host christophergrantward.com

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My Inner Child Lives Outside

Christopher Grant Ward — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0800

What is it about being a child that connected so many of us, so completely, to Nature?

And why is it, that at some point along the way to becoming adults, we were encouraged, or sometimes shamed, into both abandoning our childlike ways and leaving behind our daily rituals with the outside world?

Well, it’s taken me a lifetime to figure out who I once was, how I felt then, and what I had lost along the way.

Which brings me to today, and to the focus of this podcast, how I rediscovered a love of nature and gave myself the permission to embrace my true self again. On this episode, I’d love to show you how to give this same permission to yourself.

My name is Christopher Grant Ward, and this, is Rebel Nature. I am an award-winning artist and naturalist obsessed with the way Nature can rewire our brains and change our perception of everyday things.

I’m so happy you’re listening.

christophergrantward.com

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Make your voice heard

Welcome to Nature's Rebellion

Christopher Grant Ward — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 06:00:00 -0800

Do you ever get the feeling that our modern life isn't all that it's cracked up to be? That the way we live day to day, and the things we choose to prioritize, aren't necessarily the right things, at least the ones that resonate deeply in our souls.

For me, life seems to be full of rules that either I chafe at, or have become so used to, that I don't even notice them anymore. Does it feel like that to you? You know, I’ve realized that when I feel this way, the one place I can run to, that it feels like everyone runs to, is the natural world, right outside our windows.

For me, Nature has become a place of redemption, solace, and renewal from my disappointments with modern life, and also the key to joy. And frankly, I am obsessed with understanding the ways Nature can inspire and enrich our everyday lives.

My name is Christopher Grant Ward, and this is Rebel Nature, the podcast for anyone interested in exploring how Nature can rewire our brains and our perception of everyday things.

I am an award-winning artist and naturalist, who has been exploring these ideas for quite sometime. But also, I am just like you, still struggling and feeling lost in the noise of modern life.

You see, in the past few years since leaving my corporate career to become an artist, I’ve been on a quest to rethink how I live in the world, to learn how to see the world differently, and to challenge assumptions about everyday things, by looking at them through the lens of the natural world.

As I explore these questions for myself, I have also made it my mission to share my journey with world, with you, to offer you a different perspective about the world we live in.

Every other week, this podcast will explore an open question from my journal: questions about how we live in the modern world, how we define ourselves, and our perspective on everyday things. And then we will look for answers to these questions in the natural world. By listening, you'll learn new ways to see life for what it is, what it can be, and gain insights to enhance your well-being, and ultimately how Nature serves as a beautiful redemption from life’s rigid and grid-like expectations.

Some episodes are solo episodes where I explore a question or topic. I'll also be featuring guests who can provide their own transformative insights with nature.

If you love exploring life's questions and are looking for inspiring answers, go ahead and subscribe to Rebel Nature wherever you get your podcasts. Modern life too often feels at odds with the one outside our window. Lets reset.

I'm so glad you're listening.

Christopher Grant Ward