Awakening to Nature
I have been thinking about my love for nature, which I would describe as still growing. And did I always love nature? I’m not sure.
I certainly did not consciously love nature as a young child. But in my many, many memories of childhood, the outdoor world plays a starring role: drinking in the sweetness of lilac as I roller skated past our neighbor’s hedge; walking home from school in crisp October sunshine; examining the season’s first snowflakes as they fell; chasing lightening bugs, barefoot through the grass, on a summer evening. All of these moments are pleasant to recall. But did I ever think to myself, at the time, that I loved the nature around me? Never. Nature was simply there, as were family, home, everything else in my life. I took it all for granted, as kids do.
It wasn’t until early adolescence that I knew I loved nature. I remember vaguely, as a sixth grader, going alone on a Saturday morning to the University of Washington arboretum, near our Seattle home. The one clear spot in that hazy memory is standing, in wonder, by a tiny stream that ran through a meadow-like space in the arboretum. The stream was a pretty little thing, running clear and unencumbered between grassy banks. The stones, mosses, and twigs in the stream all looked vivid through the moving water. I felt a stirring inside, an excited new aliveness.
Today I am not sure just why that scene was so special; no doubt I had seen prettier sights before that morning at the arboretum. The specialness of standing by the stream, that has stayed with me all these years, must have had something to do with my age. Early adolescence is a time of ‘waking up,’ I remember my son’s sixth grade teacher saying about a decade ago. I assumed he was talking about sex, but I think adolescence is also a time when many young people begin to come alive spiritually.
Yes, I believe I was looking at that little stream through new eyes. And they were the eyes of one who had decided on her own to visit the arboretum, who had gone there by herself, just as a grown-up might. I had chosen this experience all on my own, and it belonged to me.
In the months that followed my visit to the arboretum, I began seeking other opportunities to be alone in nature. On weekend campouts with my Girl Scout troop, I needed to be the first one up in the morning, so that I could take a walk by myself in the quiet woods. There I found delight and a deep happiness.
Even now, the forest is where I go to soothe my spirit, to center myself. And while sharing the forest with a loved one can also be a fine experience, it is when I am in the forest alone that I am most deeply connected with the earth’s sacredness. These days I frequently go into the woods alone for what I call ‘Spirit time.’ These forest forays have given rise to many of the most heartfelt writings I have shared here. –April Moore
July 2nd, 2010 at 9:43 am
Hi April,
It sounds as if you have what Howard Gardner would call the Naturalistic intelligence–innately. I, too had experiences of the natural world as a child, such as visits to my relatives’ farms, but I didn’t light up like you did with those experiences of nature. I was more attuned to music and to my inner world. You open me to experiences of nature I would not otherwise have.
Diane
July 2nd, 2010 at 11:57 am
World-renouned naturalist Edward O. Wilson wrote a book entitled “The Biopilia Hypothesis,” which I found engrossing.
http://wilderdom.com/evolution/BiophiliaHypothesis.html
July 2nd, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Thank you for sharing this, April. It helps explain why you write so beautifully about the natural world. Your caring and passion are always evident in your writing.
I have not seen the statistics, but I have heard that there is researched support for the fact that a very high percentage of those who end up working to protect the environment — either through their career or through their volunteer work — have had childhoods that were immersed in being outdoors and having unobstructed access to it…people who, more often than not, recall spending hours as a young person rambling, wandering, and exploring outdoors.
Your personal story is certainly a support for wonderful places like parks and arboretums which offer exposure to the natural world for those who many not get it otherwise.
July 7th, 2010 at 10:25 am
I do not know if I am right or wrong to ask directly and repeatedly for truth, as each of us sees it, to be spoken loudly and clearly so that people can share an understanding of the global predicament looming ominously before humanity. But, it does appear to me that if people with knowledge lose faith in God’s gift of science by denying its presence and remaining electively mute while selfish, shortsighted leaders go forward unsustainably on the basis of specious, preternatural thinking, then the human community has no chance whatever of responding ably (ie, in sustainable ways) to the human-induced challenges before all of us.
I am trying to encourage the lighting candles because the darkness enveloping the “primrose path” many too many so-called leaders are so adamantly advocating and recklessly pursuing is anathema to me.
July 7th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Amen! I agree with Steven that we should restore our respect for science. The overwhelming majority of climate research scientists, for example, tell us there is a serious problem that needs addressing. We should pay attention.
October 14th, 2011 at 7:41 am
Thank you, April,
We face a colossal, human-induced global predicament. Emerging and
converging ecological challenges we have chosen to ignore rather than
acknowledge during my lifetime is in large part the result of the way
silence is employed by ‘the powers that be’ and their minions to
prevail over science. Hysterical blindness, willful deafness and elective
mutism of knowledgeable human beings with feet of clay rule the world every
bit as much as malignant narcissism, pathological arrogance and extreme
foolishness of greedmongering masters of the universe rule the world. This
pernicious situation is as intolerable as it is dangerous to future human
well being and environmental health.
Please consider that during my lifetime, when human numbers exploded from
less than 3 billion to more than 7 billion worldwide, many experts may not
have known enough about what they were talking about when they spoke of
human population dynamics and all causes of the human overpopulation of
Earth. Their research appears not to be scientific. What I have been trying
to communicate regarding the human population does not issue from
ideological or totalitarian thinking, or from group-think consensus for
that matter. It is not derived from what is politically convenient,
economically expedient, socially agreeable, religiously tolerable and
culturally prescribed. I have wanted to openly discuss the best available
science. That is all. It appears the generally accepted thinking of a
surprisingly large number of so-called experts in the field of population
dynamics appears to have an unscientific foundation. Their preternatural
thought and theorizing about the population dynamics of the human species
appears to be both incomplete and mistaken. Most disquieting of all, a
widely shared and consensually validated theory about a demographic
transition four decades from now is directly contradicted by unchallenged
scientific research. As a consequence, and it is a pernicious consequence,
woefully inadequate thinking and fundamentally flawed theorizing has been
broadcast during my life cycle and continues to be broadcast everywhere by
the mainstream media as if it is not only science but the best available
scientific evidence. The implications of this unfortunate behavior,
inasmuch as it appears to be based upon a colossal misperception of what
could somehow be real regarding the human population, appear profound. This
failure of nerve has served to slow momentum needed for a confrontation with
a formidable global predicament that appears to become more difficult to
overcome year by year.
In their elective mutism regarding an astonishing error, are first class
professional researchers with expertise in population dynamics behaving
badly by allowing the “ninety-nine percenters” to be misguided and led
down a primrose path by the “one percenters”? The power of silence on
the part of knowledgeable human beings with feet of clay is dangerous
because research is being denied that appears to shed light upon a dark,
non-recursive biological problem, the understanding of which appears vital
to future human well being and environmental health. Too many experts
appear to be ignoring science regarding the human population and instead
consciously through their silence consenting to the leviathan scale and
unbridled expansion of global overproduction, overconsumption and
overpopulation activities that are being adamantly advocated and
relentlessly pursued by greedmongering masters of the universe, the tiny
minority among us who are primarily responsible for ravaging the Earth,
ruining its environs and reducing its fitness for habitation by the
children. If this assessment of human behavior is indeed a fair
representation of what is happening on our watch, then the desire to
preserve the status quo, mainly the selfish interests of ‘the powers that
be’, could be at least one basis for so much intellectually dishonest and
morally bereft behavior. Could it be that the outrageous per capita
overconsumption, large-scale corporate overproduction and unrestricted
overpopulation activities of the human species worldwide cannot continue
much longer on a planet with the size, composition and ecology of a finite
and frangible planet like Earth?