Nature Is Part of Our Lives

Whether we like it or not

I grew up in Upstate New York, just south of Lake Ontario, where winter lasts pretty close to six months a year, at a time when “Go outside and play” was the accepted way to get kids out of their parent's hair. There are lots of things you can do with snow when you’re a kid — snowball fights, snow angels, snowmen (and women and children.) We played with snow the way Southern kids play with sand. Kids make do with what’s available, or they did before video games came along.

I can remember coming in with rosy cheeks, mittens soaking wet and balled with snow, snow up to my thighs on my snow pants.

In the spring, the snow melt made a creek down by the pond, and I loved to sit next to it and on a rock in the middle of it, listening to the water trickle over the stones. I’d daydream about my life in the future, nothing specific, just wondering what my life would be like when I grew up.

As an adult, I often found nature more of a problem than a joy. Commuting to work through blizzards or rain coming down like I was driving through a car wash was not my idea of a good time. I often sent my kids outside to play in the winter, but by the time I got them in their snowsuits and put plastic bags on their shoes so we could get their feet into the boots, I was too beat to go out to play with them.

I was always a walker, as my mother before me was, and a walk on a nice afternoon was a spring and fall ritual. Walking and talking, especially in the woods, is a wonderful way to get to know people and discuss problems that become smaller in the openness of the outdoors.

I remember a walk I took one day when my life was not happy. It was early spring, and I noticed the trees and shrubs showing no buds or blooms yet, and I thought, “They are sleeping now, but spring will come, and they will come to life. Maybe this is a time in my life for resting. Spring will come.” And it did, both for the plants and for my life.

Now, in the last chapters of my life, I rely on nature to hold off fears of death. I watch the hummingbirds play around their feeder, and I search for the anoles that play in my backyard trees. I watch the seasons change my trees and bushes as I watch the changes that are happening to my aging body. I remember Shelley’s line, “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” and see it as his way of saying there must be something after this life. From the winter of our lives will come the spring after, just as spring always follows winter in nature.

We are part of nature, and it is part of us. There are good days and bad days, but nature is always with us. We will always be with it, too.

For more thoughts on nature, read

Ruby Leehttps://readmedium.com/i-saved-a-butterfly-today-2f835ce3a420

and @Art Bram’s https://readmedium.com/nothing-makes-me-feel-more-alive-than-tears-in-my-eyes-eb8db68cefca

My hummingbirds and anoles say hi.

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