The Natural World

Have you spent time exploring and enjoying the natural world recently?

living, breathing forest

At this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, as it gets colder, we tend to spend more time indoors and less time soaking in the beauty nature offers us. This beauty I speak of is not only in relation to the unquestionable majesty of nature.  It also pertains to the intricate, inseparable relationship between humanity and nature that spans millennia.  This relationship is one of learning, understanding, exploitation, love, balance wisdom and reliance.

I am fortunate to live on the west coast of Canada, where the beauty of nature is limitless. There is something enchanting about watching fresh oxygen form over our rainforests, rainforests that are living and breathing.  There is something curious about the communities of loons, seals and orcas that gather together in harmony. When we pay attention, the natural world has so much to offer us.   Emily Carr, a Canadian painter spoke of the spending time in stillness to watch the forest come alive before her very eyes.  She felt that the longer we spent time observing and immersing ourselves in the beauty of nature, the more it had to teach us and the more we would see.

west coast beauty

We all have our own relationship with nature.  I encourage you to connect, to observe, to strengthen the intricacy of your relationship with the rocks, plants, elements, lakes, streams, oceans and rivers.

By spending this time in stillness, you might just be surprised by what you see, hear, smell, taste, feel and learn from the natural world…

By Rachel Frey

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3 thoughts on “The Natural World

  1. It’s always nice to see some attention swing back this way. I signed on for the animal communication group to begin with. In confirmation of this, I was driving past the firehouse in beautiful downtown Jackson, CA, and a deer ran full-tilt-boogie down high school hill and in front of me. This would be normal at my house, but not in town! We have wild turkeys in abundance at work. And an osprey. And ducks in the pond, and across the street as well. And gray foxes in the backyard, even on the back porch late at night. Flickers and acorn woodpeckers and Western Ruby -Throated hummingbirds, and turkey buzzards, and phoebes and wrens and purple finches and swifts and geese and doves and ravens; lizards and praying mantises and katydids and crickets, and ant lions, and I never ever saw a summer with so many paper wasps – only got stung once. And a few rattlesnakes, and fish are jumping, and tadpoles are swimming, and toads are heading downstream for the winter. They were still selling sweet corn near Sacramento a week after the election, and I picked the last of the red tomatoes and peppers and an eggplant tonight. Lots of green ones left. Lilacs and rosemary and roses and three kinds of thyme and goldenseal and basil and sage and feverfew and a bay tree and nicotiana and wild ginger are enjoying the fall. The morning glories and autumn crocus and snapdragons and mums are not giving it up yet either. Nor the Jasmine vines and the butterfly bush. Peaches and maples and cottonwoods still have some leaves, although they’ll probably blow off in the next few days with three big storms in a row. Other than that though, things are pretty dull and I’ll probably spend more time indoors – what’ya think ?!

  2. Well, I was being pithy! I am outside A LOT, and often when others might not be. I tend not to come in if the sun’s up, and often complain that there aren’t enough rainy days to stay in and get organized. Since my early morning paper route days, I tend to be “aware” of what’s up in the world. Usually, er sometimes, y’know!

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