I love going out for a walk after supper, and I love spring for reasons beyond count; it is a gentle time of awakenings and surprises. We expect the leaves to emerge, yet when they do we relish in their lime light and say hello as if greeting an old friend.
Old friends they are. And I walk and wonder what I else I may see while sweeping away the dust of what doesn’t matter anymore, inviting in the love of nature. It all sounds simple, and it is, but many of us may find it hard to do.
Walking into a silent room, it’s the first thing you notice – the lack of action. Walking into a natural environment, especially in spring, can offer refuge and comfort while feeling stillness. There is nothing wrong with silence, and in our world of go-go-go, it feels a little challenging perhaps to slow down, but the outside world is not noiseless.
Whether a local park or your own backyard, birds are building, bees are busy, and there is room and time to sit and watch them. The most beautiful part is that its’s not about you, and it’s not about me. It’s not about the dishes undone in the sink or the weight of a tough day. This is time to simply connect to the amazing gifts nature has to offer.
I offer gifts back the best I can – it makes me feel good in the soul. Gardening is therapy, even when you make mistakes. From them, you learn. I tend to my old perennials, heroes in the unrelenting sun; I plant seeds, realizing one or two may make it – it’s still all good; I visit the wonderful neighbor down the street who sells bright annuals and robust veggies at a criminally low price – I go nowhere else to supply our seasonal plants and hope he stays open through June.
And throughout all of this, I feel such presence of pure support, comfort, and a knowing that after a long winter, most make it back. I can too.
Some winters are harder on us than others, just as seasons of life can be, but nature gives such hope. That sunshine eventually pokes a beam in to your life right when you need it most, like the surprise jack-in-the-pulpit patch I found behind our little watch-house (our children’s treehouse was the “watch-house”, so this is “watch-house two”.) Settled in beside the rough, they are sprinkled among wild geraniums and blueberry bushes.
And the birds! The flycatchers who nest above our gutter and make a muddy mess each year are still welcome, no matter the chaos on the house below. It’s easily cleaned, and we witness a family being born and raised – the inconvenience is miniscule.
I listen to the scarlet tanager who teases an appearance high above in a towering hickory. The ovenbird declares its home within the forest, while the sapsucker highlights its work on our very much alive ash, and through it all, a feeling rises that only spring can manifest.
It is pure love of the growing.
And while this love grows inside, I continue to wander and talk to the plants, the old ones and the new ones. I admire them all. I pull at some rogue grass growing in pebbles near the hose like a champion, sighing as I squat, only to find a surprising new friend among stones beside the house.
He quietly looks back at me, maybe judging what I was doing there, and I smile at him as he made his way home to rest between the tiny concrete slabs and some yard and ocean rocks I placed there, having not yet decided on where they would go.
I know where they belong now. They serve as a roof for Francis the toad. He is my friend, and if I sat inside the house to ponder my life’s decisions that afternoon instead of heading out into healing nature, I wouldn’t have met him. My head has a great way of cueing me to quit listening to the unwanted drone of thoughts and go directly outside – no question, comment, or protest.
What a joy it is to be surprised by nature. What a treasure to receive when you give so little back, and it expects nothing of us. Our yard, and all its magic, holds me together as the sinew of my being, and the beauty of this truth is that those of us who can have the ability to connect through circumstances we are gifted – not everyone does.
So if you do, be blessed. Show gratitude for the giant spider who shares a home with you. Show compassion for the snake unbothered by your door. Have a heart for the baby birds whose life begins in a gutter by your window. Be enriched. Be inspired.
Find the treasures and make new friends. It is still possible, even at my age. I can only imagine seeing myself as a kid and how difficult I was – all that energy, all those ideas, living like an unpredictable sparkler each day- and I wonder if it would have been easier on my parents to plant me outside. Now, I know it would have been. And my grandparents had a beautiful way of knowing it too. Gardening with my Meme; fishing with my grandfather; joyrides and tag sales with my grandmother. It all begin with fresh air, the open window, the excitement of getting out.
Now it is your turn.
Stuck inside? Buy a houseplant or have a friend gift a cutting. The windowless classroom in my former life was filled with butterfly stickers and the soothing sounds of nature when we were writing and the situation allowed. I was in the dark for 16.5 years. I’m not now, and I give gratitude for that fact every single day. I start each morning with thanks at my window, no matter the weather.
Nature asks nothing of me, but it gives so much. I know it will give the same selfless gifts to you.
I’ll be heading out for a walk now.
Be blessed 😊💕
