Listening to and Learning From Nature

Several times each day I hear the honking of dozens of geese as they make their way over my home to one of the nearby lakes. When they are directly over my house, it means they are making the final descent in their flight pattern and the sound reaches a crescendo. I pause in whatever I am doing and smile inwardly. For a fleeting moment I am once again connected with nature, and it touches me at the core of my being.

I recall the carefree days of my early life when my family lived in a rural area in Missouri. I spent my days playing alone in the magical and pristine woods and streams that surrounded our home.

In this Eden-like playground, there were natural springs that bubbled up pure water from underground streams, a paw-paw patch laden with exotic fruit, and giant trees that reached to the sky and sent Tarzan-quality vines down to the ground. I lived a rich fantasy life there. Even though I was only five-years old, I was master of this domain and invincible. I was a fairy princess, a mighty hunter or Nyoka, the Jungle Queen. I could swing through the air like a bird and land in the soft embrace of the paw-paw patch.

As I matured, I developed allergies that caused me to be so wary of nature that for a long time I avoided it as much as possible. This wasn’t difficult because by then we lived in St. Louis, and everyone else seemed to be doing the same thing. Unless you really desired it, there was no reason to have much to do with grass, trees and burbling streams.

When my children and grandchildren were born, my love of nature reawakened. I took great pleasure in making sure my children had a tree house, and was delighted that they immediately began playing the same age-old game of watching clouds changing shape. We took nature walks and connected with the bounty of the Earth by caring for and harvesting the fruit from the fig, peach, plum and citrus trees in our large back yard. Then, as my grandmother would say, “We put them up,” which meant we used glass Ball jars to hold the jams and jellies we made.

I was also delighted to help my grandchildren experience nature up close and personal. The three younger ones still go for walks with me by the golf course lake near my house. We stand motionless to watch the rabbits cavort on the green grass, look for bugs to put in their Sucret’s tins and watch the various types of waterfowl take off and come in for landings on the water.

I remember walking around the golf course with them after a big rain, and one section of the walkway was under about three inches of water. They wanted to turn back. But I insisted they take off their tennis shoes and socks and walk barefoot with me through the water.

They had never done anything like that before. I will never forget the look of joy on their faces then—or the time the summer heat turned our faces beet-red and we ran fully clothed through the golf course sprinklers to cool off.

Now that society as a whole is so far removed from nature, I have a much deeper concern for the Earth. When we are not conscious of nature, we don’t care about what happens to it. We don’t realize how vital it is to our lives or how we need to protect it and to learn from it instead of trying to control it.

I remember what a wonderful wise woman shared with me a few years ago when I mentioned the geese that fly over my house. She said that the geese select one of the weakest members of the flock as a leader so that the slower ones can keep up. The honking noise is the way in which the members spur on the one that leads the V-formation. She also said that when one of them becomes ill and has to find a place to land, two others accompany the ailing bird until it is once again able to rejoin the formation, or it dies.

That is far more humane and caring than the behavior of many human beings—we have much to learn from nature. I pray we take the time to do so.
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Copyright 2008 by Fern Stewart Welch

[To view the author’s information on how to change your life and connect with the divine spirit within, go to www.FernStewartWelch.com.]

The author’s book THE HEART KNOWS THE WAY—How to Follow Your Heart to a Conscious Connection with the Divine Spirit Within is available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers, as well as through major bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders.