The Gift of Nature

Did you ever walk in a forest after a rainstorm? The leaves still dripping from the night before. You can almost sense the gratitude because of the thirst the forest felt because the weather was so dry. The forest responds by offering a fragrance that fills the air as if some forest fairy came along and spritzed it with perfume.

It has become very obvious to me that one's ability to see beauty and live in awe has everything to do with exercising your muscles of observation. There is beauty all around you, whether you live in the city, the suburbs, or deep in the woods. Learn to look deeper than you have ever looked. Slow down, watch the insects that seem so random in their moves and yet we know they're on purpose. Look for the blades of grass, or a wildflower, or a weed as it is determined to push through concrete and bricks.

Even if you live under a flight path near the airport, listen to the sounds as they pass over you. Pay attention to how you hear it in one ear and then the other, as it passes overhead. Listen when there is a downfall of rain, hear as the rain lands on a variety of surfaces. Learning to listen and learning to see brings you riches beyond your imagination. Once you grow your observation skills, the world opens.

As silly as it might seem try a few of these suggestions and experience the world around you a new way – maybe for the first time in your life.

Here are 10 suggestions on how to plugin to the world around you:

1. Hug a tree. Yes, as silly and as it sounds go out and hug a tree.

2. Take your phone, or recording device, and go into the most heavily forested area near you and record the sounds of the forest.

3. Walk through your neighborhood or a local park and see how many varieties of flowers are in that park. Pick one from each. You can take them home and trace them or dry them, but notice their differences and their sameness.

4. Sit somewhere safe, close your eyes and listen. Just listen. Take in the world through your auditory senses.

5. As mentioned in the blog above, go out into a forest or park, or even in your neighborhood, if you get practiced you will know rain is coming. And, the fragrances post-rain are amazing.

6. Depending upon where you live, go out and plant some seeds when it is weather appropriate. Watch as your seeds sprout. Pay attention to how fast or slow they grow.

7. Get off that indoor treadmill and walk outside.

8. Start a compost pile, its good for the earth to have natural compostable materials returned to it.

9. Drive to the closest body of water, stream, river, lake, ocean, put your feet in the water and relish in the feeling of it.

10. Put up a bird house or bird feeder and watch mother nature in awe, up close and personal.