Immediate Lessons from Nature

What is our relationship with the natural world today? I fear that many of us don't have much of a relationship to our natural environment anymore. Collectively, we seem to know so little about the geography, geology, topography, flora, fauna, and history of the places in which we live. Some of us let the natural world slip by largely un-noticed, a vague prettiness to be visited on occasion. Others have lost contact amidst the great business of daily existence. Many have never really had a chance to know the land because they have been raised in large, urban environments.
Please excuse the long preamble -- what I want to get to is this: what lessons has nature taught you? For me, the great presence of the natural world has always been water. Lakes, oceans, and rivers have been places that I have loved deeply. Lately, I think about water all the time. I think about whitewater. I live near the largest man-made whitewater course in the world (class II - IV rapids). The course is made of poured concrete and deliberately placed rocks and gates, yet the water that flows through the course is as alive and natural as water anywhere else, so I am learning from the water.
One of the great gifts that the water is giving me is the joy of failure: it is teaching me to embrace failure as more than an unfortunate necessity. The water has taught me that the most sure and direct way to find what I want is through failure. In concrete terms, when I paddle the course trying to avoid getting flipped, I am paddling in fear, hoping to avoid failure (and possible injury). When I do this, I progress very slowly, and ironically, the stiffness of fear makes me more vulnerable to getting flipped. Other days, I paddle with the intention of getting mauled by the waves -- on the best days, this is something devoid of fear; it is instead an opportunity for a kind of intimacy with the movement of the water. On those days when I embrace failure, I work through weaknesses and progress very quickly. By embracing failure, one side-steps fear.