Whatever we are given is home. Whatever condition, whatever tiny piece of soil our soul is cast into: home. In the wild, there’s no resistance to it. No wistful longing for some other ideal dwelling. There’s only acceptance, and the hard struggle to adapt and blend.

There’s a different context in the wild, of course: one without ghettos and freeways; without artificial vistas, either sheltering or inhospitable. The divergence of our path from the wild one has created a plasticized wilderness of its own.

The same imagination which can create prisons of thought or steel also can build a more conscious home, though—one which takes the natural lessons and adds another awareness to them. Our instinct recalls the astonishing wilderness dance of adapting and blending.

All flora and fauna have wildly creative, differing means of making their soil corner home, but their ways all work within the earth’s greater system rather than imposing careless will against it. Call the animals’ wild actions instinct or humility, or even powerlessness and an absence of intellect. It still serves them perfectly. It serves the entirety of the integrated earth.

Blending in the wild, of course, serves as essential camouflage. It’s a survival mechanism which we humans, with our ability to drive out the natural dangers, have forgetfully decided we don’t need. We have the luxury, it seems, to live in stark contrast to the land. We can survive in places of harsh angles and unnatural shapes. We can survive chaos and imbalance. What we’ve discovered, though—whether or not the conscious awareness breaks surface—is that blending is the key not only to survival, but also to calm and harmony. When we clash with our context, the chaos and imbalance slip into our souls. Stress, we call it. That chaos and imbalance can come from many sources; but our individual and collective home is a key one. The anger of cities; the frequent alienation of citizens there from each other—there are roots of this in the lost art of blending.

Blending well does not take riches or technology, especially in a healthy ecosystem. The animal architects of the world have proven this since the earth spawned them—and almost all animals are architects, with their holes, nests, burrows, dens, tunnels, dams, mounds, honeycombs, and more.

Tribal societies all over the world have also proven for tens of thousands of years that this translates to the human world. Straw-bale house builders still prove it now, among others. If you can build at all, you can dig foundations into the soil’s steadier temperature for warmth. You can face your windows to the arc of the sun for natural heat and light. You can shape and color your walls in ways which suit the land. Again, this is what wild animals have always done, with no money and only the materials close at hand.

Most of us, though, don’t find such natural design opportunity easy to come by. The corners we’re given are established: fixed city blocks, or rural surroundings where the land has been substantially altered. This is a well-used world. Living in harmony with the natural ways has become a more challenging task. Not only do we have to be conscious of creating harmony with what immediately surrounds us; we also have to create harmony with the natural world that has been layered over. To restore our connection to natural ways, we often have to blend with what is no longer near. We have to use the same potent imagination which has removed the wilderness to find ways to reintegrate small elements of it into our homes.

Nothing is more key to this reconnection than light. Some creatures evolved for darkness; but we’re not among them. Born to the surface of land, above ground and sea, we’re at home in the fullness of daylight. The morning light was meant to pace our day. So what’s more important in a home than windows which allow the morning light in?

Windows need to open, too: for if anything is more essential than light, it’s the air the light scatters through. Without its freshness, we too go stale, wither, and disappear. Our presence and sharpness directly correlate to the clarity of the air which we breathe. Not only are air and light primary in our home, they are home.

Green is home, too. In the wild, we evolved with it as our constant companion; it’s still the color of peace. A single growing sprig is enough to connect to that essence with, and there’s no home in which we can survive where some sort of plant can’t. There’s no dwelling in which we can’t bring other earthen elements in, too: wood, water, life.

If even the tiniest creature of another species can be intentionally brought to share the space—from goldfish to house cat—through that other soul a connection can be made to other ways of being; to the balance of ways and perspectives the natural world abundantly offers. And even if, by circumstance or allergy or landlord’s decree, no creature can be invited in, no worry—they will come in anyway.

The spiders and moths and other tiny creatures find their way into our homes, not only regardless of our efforts, but despite them. Nature comes in to remind us again that the small corners of home are not ours alone; they are always shared. Even there, there are no impenetrable ceilings, no impermeable floors; no true separation. Wilderness still enfolds us, in the corners of home.