Real change begins with imagining ourselves in a new way. Contemporary storyteller Brenda Peterson leads groups of inner-city teenagers in role-playing other species. She has discovered that these street-wise, alienated youth identify with other species in a profound way. Their ease and eagerness in assuming the viewpoint of other species suggests to Peterson that nature is not out there, but inside.
Peterson believes it is our own spiritual relationship to other species that must evolve and that imagination acts as a mutually nurturing umbilical cord between our bodies and the planet. When children claim another species as their ally — not just as their imaginary friend, but as the creature that has sought contact with them — it changes their outer world.
— Joanne Elizabeth Lauck, The Voice of the Infinite in the Small