Nathan Bolls

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Written By Nathan Bolls on October 2, 2025
Finding Meaning

The Bushman people of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa speak of two hungers: the Small Hunger of finding food and the Great Hunger of finding meaning in life. From what I’ve read and heard, it seems that all people speak of these two hungers.  

Written By Nathan Bolls on August 7, 2025
Seeing Beyond

One June day a few summers ago, I saw something beautiful, something profound, something too rarely practiced, something whose ramifications are too rarely considered.

I did not see the ultimate trophy home, not an immaculately manicured lawn or golf course, not the latest over-powered muscle car, not a world record set of elk antlers, not the world’s tallest tree, not the most symmetrical set of African elephant tusks ever found, not a beauty pageant, nor some masterfully played athletic contest.

Written By Nathan Bolls on July 3, 2025
Stock photo of 1940s Victory Garden.
Always honors Mother Earth.
Bend, sow, and receive
- NJB

 

Webster’s definition for the word “garden” just about covers everything: a plot of ground, usually near a house, where flowers, vegetables, or herbs are cultivated. Or, “a piece of ground or other space commonly with ornamental plants, trees, etc., used as a park or other recreational area, e.g., as an arboretum.” Or, “any beautiful, pleasing, restful piece of land.”

Written By Nathan Bolls on June 5, 2025
Generations caring for the planet together.
Each child inherits
A lifetime of rich learning.
Life goes as do we.
— NJB
 
Written By Nathan Bolls on May 1, 2025
Star Orchid
Flowers speak to us,
With many colors and scents.
But they say much more.
NJB

 

Written By Nathan Bolls on April 10, 2025
Ripple in the ocean

Most of us are aware of the notion that a pebble dropped into the ocean will, via a cascade of interconnected mechanisms, eventually affect the entire ocean. Sounds far-fetched, but the idea holds more truth than most people wish to accept.

Written By Nathan Bolls on March 6, 2025
Spending time in silence

How long has it been since you’ve experienced a moment of genuine healthful silence, a time during which you were profoundly, silently, reverently alone with yourself, or with Nature, or with another (your soulmate, perhaps), or with your God? Such rich moments are possible when you are watching, watching beyond motive, beyond any demand—just watching. When you see the beauty of a lone tree in the field, a single star in the void, when you watch your soulmate, or your internal self—or speak to your god—silence is something that comes naturally.

Written By Nathan Bolls on February 6, 2025
Bobwhite Quail

I treasure the first time I was motivated to look past the surface of a wild scene, to ponder the meanings, the fates, of the natural structures or wild organisms I was watching. It was the first time that I tried to consider the meanings, the ramifications of the interactions between the organisms in my view. Perhaps you have known the same joy.

Written By Nathan Bolls on December 5, 2024
Downtown view of Christmas past

 

Earlier this year, I attended the celebration-of-life service for an old friend. Hazel had died at age 103, but I first met her in 1943 when she was a young married woman and I was a 12-year-old new in town. Her passing meant the shuttering of yet another window through which I once could see “way back when.” The last living person who knew me during my childhood.  

Written By Nathan Bolls on November 14, 2024
Rural Kansas road.

There once was a time when the order of my day included playing with my buddies, fighting with my sister (13 months younger), wishing mightily that this fourth year of grade school were over, doing a couple of assigned farm chores, and putting off homework as long as possible. That arithmetic workbook was the sinkhole of my existence.