For the sake of noticing
It had been quite a morning. I’d attempted to squeeze in exercise, computer work and cleaning. You – well, you had not wanted to let me out of your sight. Every moment felt a bit like a battle against the situation at-hand. Finally, as the midday light warmed the wood floors, I bundled you up and strapped you to my chest. Together, we headed out the door.
Your arms and legs began to move immediately, full of excitement. Our dog brushed against my legs as he raced ahead, down the narrow path between trees. In the midday warmth, last night’s snow – early, even for Maine – fell from the branches all around us in thick, glistening drops.
As we walked, I chattered to you, pointing out different trees, a squirrel, our dog’s journey as he scampered after scents.
Eventually, we reached the edge of a nearby pond. Small waves jostled over one another. Dried grass swayed at the edge, golden in the late November sun. Across the water, bare trees reached into a bright blue sky, like skeletal hands remembering a deeper warmth.
My chatter stopped. So did your movement. We stood, still and silent, and looked and looked. After the rush of the morning, my mind finally grew quiet. All ridiculously paradoxical thoughts of “Will I ever get time to myself?” and “Am I giving my baby enough attention?” ceased. A much larger drama played out before our senses, one filled with a great sense of purpose.
As we stood in silence, I wondered what you were thinking. While you are not yet speaking words, to say you aren’t communicating would be laughable. From cries to shrieks to many, many gurgled sounds, you talk to us often. But in that moment, you were quietly absorbed in the world around you. Your attention was palpable.
What does that world mean to you? What do you feel as you watch the sun and water dance and the trees brush the sky?
I watched the wind move the water and the grass and I felt a deep sense of peace wash through me. It was as if the breeze blew through my body, my bones, with a whisper of: “There. There.”
There, all around us, was what really mattered. And as we feasted with our senses, I noticed hope flood into me. I hoped for your relationship with the natural world around you. I hoped you would know the gifts of that world, how it can nourish you, provide you with purpose, and fill you with wonder. I hoped the struggle that is seeping into that world, a struggle against the growing negative impacts of industrial human society, will not negate your love for the natural world or its capacity to bring you peace.
I craned my neck so I could glimpse your profile, facing out from around the position of my heart. How fitting. I birthed you and hold you with the greatest of loves even as I send you outward, into the world. You two have an intertwined future. Eventually, if the fates are kind, you will both outlast me.
Your soft round cheeks were rosy in the November air. Your great blue eyes were open wide and darting. And as I watched you watch the world, I realized that you two are already forging your relationship. For all my hopes, all my chatter of plant names, you are most guided in this fresh new phase of your life by quiet observation. Your filtering of the world is untainted by facts or species identification. You are absorbed, as you were on that November morning, in pure sensation. You are noticing for the sake of noticing.
A new wish flooded me. I wished I could see the world from your perspective. I wished I could set down agenda and move between the earth and sky with no preconceived notion of my place in that great dance of life. What would I learn if my only teachers were the ones still most connected to the true rhythms of that world? What would I know about what I really need and how best to fill a life?
We walked the entire way back from the water in silence. Over moss brilliantly green after all the recent rain. Under chattering squirrels, busy in the branches above. And all the while, the great, shimmering drops of melting snow made their journey from trees back to earth. Just one glistening moment in water’s never-ceasing cyclical journey.
Back inside, I snuggled you into a nap and then sat in front of my computer to write about how best to foster a connection to nature in young people. I poured over studies and jotted down notes, but all the while, the look on your face as you gazed over the water echoed in my mind. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that perhaps I’m asking the wrong questions. Perhaps we all are. Perhaps it’s not a matter of how we can foster right relationship between humans and nature in young people today. Perhaps, instead, it’s a question of how they can remind us how to begin again ourselves. Perhaps our best work is to take a walk together, without agenda, undefined by names or facts, our only objective to notice and be taught anew.