I’m a nature-loving, trail hiking, mountain climbing kinda guy. Nature brings me back to the better parts of myself — my sense of oneness and my memories.
So I’m getting a little stir-fry crazy stuck in my apartment on corona lockdown.
But nature is a wonderful thing.
Like roots pushing through rock, I’m starting to see that it’s still finding a way in through the cracks in my locked-down apartment (sometimes literally).
If you’re open to it, there’s the chance for connection.
You can find it in the least likely of places.
Like a buzzy, stripey, black and yellow, stingy carapace of menace and malicious intent…
… which actually turned out to be an insightful, timely lesson on how to connect with nature despite the lockdown.
I’ll give you the wisdom (and spare you the fright) that I got from the hornet that flew into my apartment yesterday.
He got a little stuck between the curtains and the pane of glass above the window he came in through.
He was smart enough to be thinking of escape, but not quite smart enough to just backtrack.
I briefly assessed how desperate for company I was.
I decided that, though he was handsomely colored, the half-inch stinger in his tail and his evident lack of problem solving abilities made him a poor candidate to be my isolation buddy.
He had to go.
A lot of people might have reached for the nearest blunt object that was big enough to slay the monster without breaking the window.
I, however, have a solid no-kill policy on anything that’s not actively trying to hurt me.
So I got a suitably sized notepad, climbed up on the bed so I could reach him, and waited till the hornet was walking in the right direction.
He toddled obligingly onto the notepad and I started climbing down from the bed to take him to the window. And then I tripped…
In my fall, I jerked the notepad out from under him.
For the longest of moments, I feared the stinger of the inch long beast and imagined it plunging into my screaming skin again and again.
But he just flew off through the window like it was nothing.
Granted, he didn’t stop to thank me (abrupt jerky falls weren’t winning me any 5 star Ly
ft reviews).
But I do remember thinking that, with the menace removed from my apartment and fresh air beneath his wings, both our days had just got a little better.
I even felt something more…
Something that I’d not felt for the last couple of weeks…
When I looked inside myself, I recognised a feeling I’d felt so many times before in forests and up mountains.
It was a little tingle of inner joy from that beautiful moment of feeling at one with nature.
And I’d got it despite being in my sterile apartment.
That black and yellow little monster had taught me a powerful lesson:
Connecting with nature means seeing something natural, for sure. Beyond that though, you need to consciously connect with the emotions or memories nature is triggering in you.
Now I look a little every day, out of my window and into myself.
I’ve noticed that there are different butterflies coming past at different times.
The bright green ones are the rarest. They take me back to the green hairstreak butterflies in the hedgerows between the fields of England where I’ve hiked.
There’s a multitude of small birds I’d never noticed too. I only ever saw sparrows before. But now that I’m looking, I’m seeing little doves and other birds I can’t identify.
Once, while I was sipping my tea and doing some window staring, I even saw a flash of iridescent blue.
Whatever that mystery bird was, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the kingfishers that fly down the river behind the house where I grew up.
And someone a few buildings over is using their flat roof as a little garden space. They were planting and cutting a few days ago.
That rich, loamy aroma made my fingertips feel the potatoes we used to dig when I was a boy.
There’s still nature around me. And it’s still doing everything that nature does best — taking me back to myself, through my memories and into my joy.
I just have to look for it — and there’s a difference between looking at nature and looking for nature.
Looking at nature is vacant window staring. Looking for nature is an intentional act of looking out and looking in.
It’s the art of really observing the nature you can still lay your eyes on, and seeing what memories and emotions it brings out from within you.
The hornet brought an unexpected (but very welcome!) jolt of joy. The butterflies take me back to England. The mystery fast flying blue bird took me back to my childhood home.
If you’re willing to look for nature, you can see how there are lots of little shoots pushing through the cracks in the lockdown and into your interior world.
As a visiting hornet once taught me, that connection can come in the least likely of places.
It’s worth looking for though — you’ll be brought back to nature, and to yourself.