A few evenings ago I was sitting on a rough cedar deck, watching sunlight orange across the tops of the poplar and maple canopy, and thinking how nice it was to be visiting my friend’s house in the forest: the nestled feeling, the total privacy, the familiar smells. He confessed that, sometimes, he too liked to imagine his house from the perspective of a guest, walking through his gardens, up the wooden steps, and into the kitchen with the eye of an outsider, taking the time to appreciate it without the preconceptions and perceptual habits that develop after living in a place for an extended period of time. Perhaps it was the effects of the mixture of Schisandra kombucha, gin, and tonic water we were drinking, but this short exercise in mindfulness seemed to me as both a useful habit to practice and also a profoundly important skill for the modern human. We are so entrenched in our politics, our communities, our niches and worldviews that, without occasionally looking at life from outside the fences, we might run the risk of missing out on an important and useful perspective.