4 Ways to Boost Your Nature Connectedness

Looking to expand your connection or re-connect with the natural world? There are many reasons to spend more time in nature, including stress reduction, creative inspiration, health, and overall wellness. Below you will find four ways to boost your connection to nature and get better in touch with your natural instincts.  

1. Take care of a plant.

Whether you are brand new to caring for a plant or you are running out of space in your home to put them, consider how much houseplants can teach us about our connection to nature. Consider the warmth and color they add to your home and the satisfaction you feel from sharing your energy and time to care for them.

For those new to houseplants, the most important advice I can give you is: never give up. Focus on forming a relationship with your plant and a commitment to its survival will follow. Have questions about the health of your plant? Answers are never more than an internet search away. Good, hearty beginner species to try include: philodendron, pothos vine, peace lily, snake plant, lucky bamboo, and Christmas cactus.  

If you have one or more houseplants already, spend some time examining them up close. Focus on strengthening your relationship to your plants or consider treating yourself to taking home a new species you’ve had your eye on. Examining the intricate and obvious differences between species will breed an appreciation for the abundance of diversity in this world.

2.  Get creative.

Express yourself creatively using nature as a tool or as inspiration. Stack stones, collect items to build a mini-shrine and reflect on the time you’ve spent present in nature, journal, draw, paint, take photographs, collect and arrange bouquet of wildflowers. The possibilities of what you can create are as endless as the discoveries you will make as you spend more time in the natural world. 

3. Take a hike.

Take a hike like you’ve never stepped foot in the woods before – play, experiment, touch, let your curiosity lead you and you’ll be amazed at the new things you find. Pay attention to the micro-world, spend some time in the dirt or sand or turn some rocks in a stream. There are stories in every puddle and under every decaying log just waiting to be experienced. Spend some time, also, in the darkness … and look up! Stargazing will enable you focus on what is big and beautiful and mysterious in a tradition that goes as far back as human existence. 

Think about joining a hiking group. Websites like meetup.com and local community groups offer a chance to connect with others while you connect with nature. Many parks and nature centers also offer free or inexpensive guided hikes or plant walks with experienced naturalists. Here, you can bring the questions and curiosities from your own hikes and learn to see the natural world from a different perspective.

4. Celebrate the seasons.

Yes, even winter can and should be celebrated! Eat seasonal foods, decorate, make seasonal flower arrangements, pay attention to the weather and small changes in the natural world around you. Indulge in and appreciate all the nuances that constitute each season. Experience them completely and then let them go. Each season is fleeting – for the good OR bad – and this teaches us a powerful lesson on living in the present.

The bzz

8.8.19

This morning I was laying in bed when I heard a strange bzz’ing coming from a balcony that attaches to my bedroom in my small one-bedroom apartment. I knew my cat, Chester, sat on the concrete of the balcony taking in the morning air. The bzz’ing alerted me that it might be time for him to come inside. As I slid open the screen door, it looked as If he had cornered a bug between the lip of the door and the screen. So, I forced him in, thinking to myself that he had either already eaten the bzz’ing bug or he had given up. Chester ran into the living room, I assumed to check his food bowl. Pleased with myself for remedying the situation before it got deadly, I plopped back down on my bed to relax and bury my nose in my phone.

Then… bzz, bzz. I heard it again. This time from in the living room. I ran to the scene of the sound and there was Chester hunched over with some kind of enormous something in his mouth. I reached down to grab the scruff of his neck and demanded that he spit out whatever this creature might be. A bug materialized, a fat cicada stared up at me in the chaos of the event, red eyes, intact wings, fully body. I took in the site of the cidada for a moment while still holding Chester back by the scruff of his neck.

Bzz, bzz. The cicada flew to a corner of the room, desperate to escape I’m sure. Chester too was desperate to finish what he had started. And I was intent to remedy the mistake I’d made in letting Chester back in. My left hand held back my cat and the right cupped itself over the bug, gently trapping it’s armored body against the floor.  Now my left hand was free to let go of Chester and to meet the right creating a safe chamber meant to deliver the cicada back to the wilds of suburbia.

Bzz, bzz… the cicada vibrated my skin, fluttering its wings and perhaps wondering what new fresh hell it had fallen into. Chester followed the two of us to the balcony where I let the creature go, carefully placing it upon the white banister of the balcony. The cat and I both watched it fly away, free.

After the deed was done, I returned back to my bed. The cicada was gone. The hunt was over. But, I could still feel in my hands a resonating bzz bzz.

Summer Migration

Spreadsheets and lists and physical exertions from a move have consumed my life as of late, while writing has fallen by the wayside. I am typing this update from my bed while I am temporarily sidelined from physical activity. My spouse and I no longer own much in the way of furniture and many of our possessions are boxed up in preparation for this cross country move - the second one in 2.5 years. I suspect I will be an expert mover after this round. I thought I might share some of my philosophical musings on this whole process, as told to myself, by myself.

• Moving will challenges the creative process

My heart will ache to create practically screaming at me and flooding my whole body with both desire and guilt. While my brain will tell me over and over, “NO NO NO.” It will say, “There is too much to be done. The house is a mess and you cannot work in messes. The time for creation is after this task has been checked off. Besides, you deserve a break from the agony of the creative process. Just let yourself go. Let it go. Maybe you don’t want it that much anyway. Look at all of the evidence that you cannot follow through with writing or art or creation. You are an analytical person. Not a creative. Who are you kidding? Stick with the lists and spreadsheets - besides you have to find a new job.” If I’m lucky (like I am in this moment) I catch myself in these negative cognitions, I will take a deep breath and say softly to that advice, “No thank you” and create anyways.

• Moving as practice in non-attachment

When my sister and I were children, my mother would periodically show up in our bedroom with a trash bags and tell us we couldn’t leave our rooms until the empty bag was filled with donations. I remember my sister and I strategizing about what to give away - bigger toys fill the bag faster, VHS tapes are bulky and can be rented, no sense in getting rid of small things like barbie shoes even if we didn’t want them because the space they took up would be miniscule. There was a part of me that hated this ritual, but there was another part of me that felt free in letting toys go. My sister and I both grew up into adults who constantly (or periodically) purge our possessions. Still, being forced to pare down for a move in a time crunch has me ruminating on why I feel particular attachments to some items over others and why getting rid of some items feels like such a loss. More than anything, moving also illuminated the attachments I have to the place where I live, the biome I inhabit, being surrounded by conifers, rivers, an entire new ecosystem I have been learning since moving here. There is a certain alchemy in attachment that I have been practicing, saying my goodbyes to so many particulars that I love about this place. Each attachment honors a deep love and shows appreciation, rather than hostility, towards its impending absence.

• Moving and honoring one’s body and abilities

One of the most challenging aspects of chronic pain is that my mind tells me one thing about how much I can and would like to accomplish and my body just flat our refuses. It is why I am in bed now, writing, creating, saving up physical energy to do the day’s tasks. Pain also takes mental energy to reason with. There is a threshold I can push to the edge, but I dare not go over because the pain will be unbearable. There are plenty cultural narratives about productivity and usefulness and chronic pain or illness will (pardon my language) challenge the fuck out of any ideas you might have about what makes a person worthwhile in the world, or in capitalism in particular. There are many reasons that I am grateful for the perspective that chronic pain has brought to my life, even though it is not something I would wish on another soul. I am finding the time to rest and to shift in all of this.

I prefer to think of moving in different ways than my conditioning dictates. I prefer to think of it as a time when one can really sink into the feeling of being a mathematical vector, a point with great magnitude, moving in one direction. I also prefer to think of moving as a migration, that “v” in the sky that means home goes with you wherever you are. I am home now amongst the boxes and the chaos. I will continue to be home in the journey.

Recommended Podcasts

I have to admit that I was a little late to the podcast game. For the longest time, I associated podcasts with itunes/apple. After all, the name originated as an amalgamation of the words ipod and broadcast. It seemed like too much of a hassle to try and get them on my phone. For a long time, I stuck to my library audiobooks and figured I wasn’t missing out on too much. But, boy was I wrong. Over the past couple years, podcasts have become standard parts of my days and weeks. It is such a joy to listen to passionate and intelligent folks talk about things for which they are passionate and knowledgeable. I have come to collect them on my phone like rare and prized stamps in a collection. So, this week, I decided I would detail a few of my recent favorite episodes below:

The Plant Proof Podcast, hosted by Simon Hill - Building a Healthy Gut With Dr. Will Bulsiewicz

This episode covered SO MUCH. It delves into the basics of the latest science on the micro biome, as told by gastroenterologist and plant food advocate Dr. B. Both fascinating and enlightening, it will give you new insight into the multitudes within us.

The Rich Roll Podcast, hosted by Rich Roll - Andrew Morgan on the True Cost of Fast Fashion

I know what you’re thinking. You’ve seen the movie, how much more could this podcast contain that you haven’t already heard? The answer is a lot. Rich and Andrew get into really insightful conversations about family, personal responsibility, and duty as it relates to living in a capitalist society. This one came out almost four years ago, but I just heard it for the first time last month. If you haven’t listened yet either, it’s worth checking out.

Between the Covers, hosted by David Naimon — Layli Long Soldier: Whereas

Poet Layli Long Soldier on poetry, place, history, and her book of poems, Whereas. This is one of the best podcasts to which I have had the pleasure of listening. I won’t give away too much. Just listen. I promise you won’t regret it.

The Case for Summer

June is finally here and it is officially summer in the northern hemisphere. I am over here rejoicing in my most favorite season. Spring spent a few years in that top position because it meant the end of winter. But now (and forever more) summer reigns supreme. Here’s why:

• Sunshine: I have lived in the Pacific Northwest for the past two and half years, a place famous for its rainy weather. However, it is not the rain that bothers me. What really reaches into the soul and brings me down to the depths of hell is a PNW winter, where direct sunlight disappears for months at a time, what feels like endless overcast skies. Summer means the return of sunshine, even in the rainy, dark PNW.

• Warmth: give me sweat over shivers any day. The heat gives me extra energy to move and exercise. Besides, summer is the only time my hands and toes thaw out from their icy norm.

• Summer clothes: summer clothing is better than all other clothing. Fight me about it. Tank tops and shorts and sandals all the way. The more skin exposed for the sun to kiss the better. Throw on some sunglasses and let’s get outside.

• Swimming: open water swims are some of my most favorite activities. I adore the vastness I feel suspended in a deep column of water. I love swimming from shoreline to shoreline. The way my lungs feel so powerful and strong after swimming is unmatched by any other sport I have found.

• Summer reading: winter reading is a close second, but summer reading wins out because it often takes place on a beach or in a lawn chair or a picnic blanket in a grassy field. Winter reading is great because its cozy and often curled up by a fire. But, summer reading is versatile - it is reading that gets thrown into a knapsack and carried with you everywhere.

Who else is excited to get outside this summer? What is your favorite season and why? What is on your summer reading list? Let me know if the comments below.