As I am spending more time outdoors, I am coming full circle back to a deeper relationship with nature, more often immersed in the sights, sounds, smells and sensations of the woods and water in a way that profoundly began in my childhood. I have many early memories of natural wonder.
Maybe you too feel as did William Wordsworth when he wrote: My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky. So it was when my life began. So it is now I am a man. So it will be when I shall grow old, or let me die! The child is the father of the man. And I could wish my days to be bound to each by natural piety.
Wordsworth also wrote the longer, melancholy poem “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” in which he expressed that childhood’s special relationship to nature is not available to the adult. But I believe it is. We can become just as immersed, just as delighted.
Although I did not grow up on a farm or in a rural area, there was plenty of flora and fauna in my suburban neighborhood to capture my childhood attention. Yearly family driving trips to the beach, with different rural landscapes and terrains along the way in addition to the strange creatures and plants of the seaside, also served to imbue my memories with indelible impressions.
Frequent trips to the zoo with my grandfather enamored me of the outside world’s snakes, reptiles, birds and mammals. How intently and strangely the oryx stared at me, how graceful were the slow-loping giraffes. The peculiar calls of tropical birds and the rumbling roar of the big cats stirred my heart. The stink of the different animal areas helps keep my memories real.
One of the things that made most natural interactions of childhood so special was the simplicity of quietly being absorbed in what I was experiencing without distractions or analysis. And now I am going into the woods more often and just being: watching, listening, smelling, breathing.
A few of my favorite childhood memories:
Marveling over lightening bugs as they began lighting up each evening during warm weather in Central Alabama. They had a certain smell as they floated around me, landing softly when I lifted my hands toward them.
Standing barefoot in the wet, sandy dirt, in the wide and deep drainage ditch near my house, I leaned over shallow, slow moving water. I intently watched tadpoles squiggling beneath me, then dipped up a glass jar full of the cool water and brought them closer to my eyes.
The small patch of tiny, multicolored clay-slate rocks at the edge of Miss Pitman’s yard. The oddly shaped pebbles were fascinatingly out of kilter with the dirt and grass in the rest of the yard. I would stare at them wondering how they got there. Although I was tempted to take a few, I felt they were supposed to stay there.
A few more recent ones:
Strange, green glinting appeared on the headlamp-illuminated trail in front of me as I walked back to the truck. I thought it might be water droplets. Slowing and stopping to get a closer look. I saw fair-size bugs with beautiful, glowing green eyes nestled in the damp grass.
Thick-petaled yellow, orange and green flower blooms mysteriously lay on the ground around where I was resting against a tree. They weren’t attached to a stalk or bush and looked unearthly. I had never before seen them in the Alabama woods. Looking up, I saw the same lovely blooms, not yet haven fallen, on the limbs above.
Quietly watching for turkey as the light fell past twilight into the beginning of early evening, I heard a strange single note call repeating in the scrub about 20 feet away. As it was too dark to hunt, I flipped my blind over and started gathering my year. A good size bird flew out away to my left and I noticed what looked like long pheasant tail feathers. I am not sure what I saw but I’m still thrilled to have heard and saw it.