I suspect that with sufficient attention and familiarity all things cease to be foreign and enter the ranks of the living. Within the Great Lakes basin a defining attribute of landscape is the border where land and water meet. The shore is a very labile border where the equation between life and death is continually changing. Sand dunes are precarious footholds for life at whose back the skin of plantlife forms a tenuous bridge to woodland. The cleanliness so attractive about Lake Superior is a function of sterility, for here life is but a thin membrane stretched taught and easily disrupted.
Life seems most meaningful when frail.
Trees clinging to exposed rock are more soulful than uniform sawlogs in plantations, the vital force more evident in adversity. In winter they become particularly evocative beings whose structure is laid bare as they stand poised between death and rebirth. The nude person, too is exposed and more present for being unprotected by clothing, therefore expressive and beautiful. We need to see truth stripped bare of obvious doctrine. We can still be simple and childlike in our love of nature and beauty, but it must be a second order childhood which has evidently tasted life and carries the knowledge of fallibility.