Nature is Nurture

Photo: This may or may not be part of a golf course. We may or may not have been trespassing. No matter, there was a path and a stream and I was there for it. A dark still stream is flanked by straight and leaning trees and on either side is a soft greening bank with small yellow flowers peeping out.

This is the time of year that makes me marvel at the natural world. It is like marvelling over a newborn baby, before the endless diapers, the midnight feedings, the skinned knees, homework marathons and teenage ennui. These are the moments of watching a tiny being sleep, with minutely flickering eyelids and breathy dream-sighs. These are the miniature shoots emerging from warm dark earth, the greening of the landscape seemingly overnight, and trees budding out in a rainbow of colors. And there's nothing I need to do. All I have to do is watch it unfold and unfurl.

During days of difficulty and spells of great stress, nature is the only thing that can save me. It is the only thing that ever has. 

To say that nature is a balm is like saying that oxygen is kinda nice to have. There is a sense of safety in the natural order of things. There is a comfort in acknowledging our insignificance and impermanence. To admit that humanity is no more than animality is like letting myself off the hook for the responsibility for everything.

Spring happens even when you're not looking. It creeps slow like erosion and as forcefully as glaciers. Even when we want it to hurry, it moves at its own pace, like an ancient grandmother that kneads dough, feeling and pulling, pressing and patting, not to be rushed by anything. Not even our mouthwatering hunger.

There is no way sadness can advance when there is the gentle filtering of morning light across veined leaves. The everyday aches and pains of being human are annihilated by the growing or budding of unexpected life. 

So, I walk, I breathe, I absorb all the soft, burgeoning life around me and allow it to settle like silt, like a spray of dew-droplets on cushions of moss. I soften my gaze and relax my focus and I go on.