As a young man, I often took walks filled with nature observation with my Grandma Bertha. These meanderings were filled with discussions about beauty, being connected, joy, harmony, and feelings. Rarely did we discuss the scientific, practical aspects of what we were enjoying, unless it was somehow connected to a larger discussion of serenity, cooperation, and happiness being in nature and feeling the spiritual roots of Creation around us.
The other day, when I wrote “Interview With A Native Pawpaw Patch”, a 3000+ word blog post, I was shocked to realize there was almost no sense of joy, happiness, or spiritual feeling in what I wrote. Sure, the words were accurate, well thought out, and thorough. The blog told of my experiences and learnings at Spirit Tree Farms in Northwest Georgia over the past several years discovering, planting, managing, and even eating pawpaws. But when I read what I’d written, it was almost as if “biology Dave” had emerged to discuss the practical and scientific aspects of pawpaw production.
What had happened to NaturesGuy Dave? The guy who will wander out into the woods and fields, sauntering past dozens of different species of wildflowers, trees, and other plants, not trying to figure out the science of them, but enjoying their spirit and the creativity, peace, and harmony they brought into his soul? The guy who will break unto a joyful dance during sunrise in the middle of a field of goldenrods, as dozens of migrating geese honk loudly overhead? The guy who wades out into a still reflection of a central Wisconsin lake sunset and weep as he becomes part of the evening scene, creating sparkling wavelets that capture the multi-hued sky?
He’d disappeared into a pile of practical analysis and machine-like process improvements, focusing on the what, how, where, and when of nature, instead of feeling the joy of asking and discovering why. And, today, I’m sad about that.
My Grandma’s Nature Observation Legacy
You see, my Grandma’s legacy was never to do some deep scientific analysis of what we experienced at her water-front home in Central Wisconsin. Sure, sometimes we would get into the “why, what and how” of the trees and plants around us. But usually our nature observation focused on the beauty we saw and how it made us feel.
In fact, the evening after she suffered a minor stroke, before a major one hit and she slipped into a coma she’d never recover from, she walked with my sister and baby niece to her boathouse. There, watching a sunset like she had thousands of times before, with hundreds of relations and friends, she struggled to speak, saying, at the end, simply, “Beautiful.”
When Grandma got ready for bed that evening for (unknowingly) her final time, the last words my Dad heard her say were: “Beautiful sunset!”
That’s the nature observation lesson I’ve always held deep in my heart, soul, and spirit: Nature speaks to me best when she touches my soul, when she ignites my creativity, when she fires my imagination, when she stirs the depths and very core of my being. It’s why I write, and write, and write even more haiku, sonnets, odes, free verse, and other poetry and prose.
Feeling Nature is what moves me to tears, what makes me run through the fields, waving at the sun, moon, stars, geese, dragonflies. The feelings and spirit of Nature are what make me stare at a doe and her fawn, (even if I’m pleading with them to stay out of my garden!) It’s what makes me wave at the sun as it’s rising, and “sound my barbaric yawp” after it sets.
Nature Observation Gives The Feels
Read my CyranoWriter poetry blog. Nature observation gives me “the feels” to capture and write down those deep, poignant movements that stir my soul so completely that I can’t help but gaze with tear-filled, grateful eyes heavenward, earthward, and all around, raising my palms open to the breeze, and whisper or holler in deepest gratitude: “Thank you. Thank YOU for all this beauty! And bless you for how it makes me feel, for the joy it brings to my life, for how fulfilled I feel on the daily because of it!”
Only Science: The Biggest Environmental Mistake Humans Make in Nature Observation
Is the science of nature observation vital? Certainly. It’s how we learn, grow, comprehend. It’s where we make ecosystem connections. It’s where we get how Nature works together. But if we forget the spirit of nature observation and appreciation, the lessons and messages of gratitude and wonder and creativity and joy and awe that Nature inspires in us, then we are missing the point of it all.
Missing those Nature-sent and God-sent messages of joy and insight, (“Freude trinken alle Wesen/ An den Brüsten der Natur!”, as Schiller and Beethoven wrote) would be the biggest environmental mistake we as humans could ever make. Shouldn’t we be co-creators and partners with Nature, not lords and masters who think they know everything?
How do we reach that state? We can shift our focus from fixing Nature to enjoying Nature, and listening to the Creator as we learn what to do. As John Muir, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, and others have discovered throughout the last few centuries, it’s not the science of Nature that moves us to love her and want to protect her. It is her Spirit, or rather the Creator’s spirit, that moves through Nature, into us, that makes us hear her, feel her, converse with her, fall in love with her, and ultimately sacrifice to protect her, and everything she embodies.
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