Wesley Carey: Lane's First Axiom

The first of the four guiding axioms that Lane provides is that nature is not chosen, it chooses. This axiom notes that people don't simply decide that a place is sacred, the sacredness of the place reveals itself to the person. This is important as it recognizes that place itself is an active participant. People can't point to a place as being sacred if nothing strikes them as unique or extraordinary about it. The features and circumstances of a place upon which a person discovers it greatly influence their experience of it. Therefore, it is up to nature to reveal itself under the right conditions to be considered sacred.

When I was in about 4th grade my friend and I were adventuring in the woods when we stumbled upon a place where there were a few fallen trees that had arranged themselves in a sort of overlapping triangle. Something about this place struck both of us as fascinating, and we established it as our "fort." We regularly visited the site for the next couple of years and it became an important part of my childhood. Had we discovered the place under different circumstances, we likely wouldn't have found anything about the place to be miraculous and may have never returned.