Reconnecting With Nature

Deer in the back yard at dawn.

"For the 99 percent of the time we've been on Earth, we were hunter and gatherers, our lives dependent on knowing the fine, small details of our world.  Deep inside, we still have a longing to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination, our language, our song and dance, our sense of the divine."

- Janine M. Benyus

Our new home that we moved in to last summer is right in the middle of an old potato farm. Nature has begun to reclaim what human hands once altered, and wild creatures are returning.

One of the things that strikes me the most here is the quiet. No sirens, no constant traffic, no unnatural sounds at all. 

What we do have in this soundscape is wind, rain, and bird calls. It is very soothing after living most of my life in more highly populated urban surroundings.

Every morning I get up at the silent arrival of dawn to draw the curtains and let the sun's heat in to the house. 

On many mornings I have seen a small herd of deer in the back yard grazing on the new meadow grasses. 

For a few minutes as I stand in the sun's beams at my window, everything is perfect.

At these moments I feel that most of the world's problems would take care of themselves if we would only give in to our longing, and reconnect with the nature from which we all came.

We must learn to love it all over, to again see it as divine. In my experience, people won't knowingly harm the things that they love, honour and cherish.

This is what I think about in the morning as I watch nature unfolding on the old potato farm.