Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. —Albert Einstein

As much as I loathe quoting Einstein - it feels a little too easy - the smart man was on the money with these words. There's nothing nature can't teach you about life, the universe and everything. Go to the woods, the mountains or the sea, my friends - no matter, as long as you are walking with the wilds. It is in these spaces where you find the real answers.

This week's question of the week for Ecotrain is about connecting with nature - and why it's important. Nature is everything, for all of us - not in a woo hoo I love trees kinda way but in a very essential way that somehow we've forgotton, in our rush to defy and overcome and tame nature in some idea of progress. Somehow money means more to us than the natural world which truly sustains us. Even the wilderness is packaged and sold as an experience.

When I step into the natural world I feel as if I become one with all things. I don't know how to explain this in a less woo woo way. But when I'm crouched at the edge of a pine forest with wet knees identifying a mushroom, I feel as if I'm part of a larger web of life. I cut the mushroom at it's base and the spores, often invisible, float into the air, settle in the ground, beginning new mycellium which entwines with the roots of trees which spread out across the forest, which nourish them so that they fruit for the birds to eat, to spread the seeds so that more trees grow, onwards toward infinite pathways of life. Seeds, tree, root, fungal hyphae. And if you are one with all that, you are just as important as every single other thing in this system. That thought has a way of removing despair. You're important. I'm important. And at the same time, we are no better than any other living thing on this earth. How can you harm the world, the creatures upon it, if you are the same as them?

I wonder if we all had a closer relationship with nature, whether we'd be able to cope more with life. Nature teaches us all the time, yet we get so wrapped up in things we forget to really listen. Nothing is permanent except change. The seasons cycle through. The mayfly is born and dies in a day, as do we, except our day is unimaginably longer to the mayfly. We grieve at the passing of a loved one with abandon, and forgot how to live in the meantime, so consumed we become with something that is as natural and true as the buds in Spring and the leaf fall in Winter. Even the dead trees, the ones that don't come back, fulfil a higher purpose, feeding multitudes of insects and mycellium and taking a different form, but existing still, even if they cannot be percieved.

I think everyone had some kind of magical experience with nature during the pandemic, because we were forced to slow down. Even in city apartments, people had to stop to watch the sky, the tree on the sidewalk, the animals that returned when the traffic disappeared.

For me, nature was a balm, a soothing energy, not least because it was a constant in a time of heightened anxiety that was arising from so much uncertainty. I could trust in in the ground beneath my feet even if everything else was suddenly awry. But there she was, giving me an extraordinary amount of reminders about life as well, and a sense of connectedness. I wrote poetry, dipped my hands in cool streams, picked nettles and cleavers, got lost in streams of light.

This poem was one of gratitude, love and deep listening. It's called 'Forest Hum' and I was particularly proud of it.

I crouched in wild garlic fields on a cool day -
Settled in the dark woods, they greenly nudged my boots
Nodded podded flower heads, a snowy bouquet
Praying to earth, under which white bulbs crowd, rooted

With ash, who twists upward through the muted shade
Releasing a resonant syllable in an entish tongue
Began decades gone, heard but once in this shadowy glade
Where I listened deep, and heard the hum

Of growing things - tail, claw, tooth and wing
The bees, home from the yellow meadow
The sigh of badgers, the robins darting song
And the drumming of the earth, quiet, soft and low.

In English woods, I was consoled, soothed, given purpose, calmed. I understood the why of the pandemic, my mortality, and was okay with my becoming into soil, food for the wild earth. It was a deeply magical, spiritual experience.

Nature of course isn't always such a sighing, humming thing - it can be brutal and destructive too. But even in that are lessons. Australian writer Dorothy McKellar famously wrote of this country's 'beauty' and 'terror' from shady glade to cracked earth drought, but ultimately expressed a deep love for this land she felt tied to, felt a sense of place within.

Whether it's a sense of spirituality and awe, an acceptance of life an death, a deep love of all creatures or a sense of abundance, and everything in between, nature helps me understand life better - and do life better.

Mountains, rivers, woods, streams, soil, sky, water. I am that. I am that.

With Love,

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