Our Need for Nature
A view from a recent walk near our home.
For most people 2020 has been a year of abrupt change and challenge. Our resiliency and patience have been tested, our place in society questioned. We look in the mirror and wonder who we are. Perhaps we are learning about the things in our life that are most important. For example, Sam and I learned that frequent immersion in nature is not a luxury but an absolute necessity. We saw this was true for others as well after witnessing the flocks of people reconnecting with nature during the pandemic.
The start of the pandemic found us living in suburbia in a small city. Even though nature trails abound in that city, the constant noise, busyness, and consumerism had us disconnected from nature and ourselves. We knew we needed to make a change and we knew that one of the major changes we needed was a deeper connection with nature. And so in a span of a month we not only put our suburban home on the market, we sold it and moved out… with no place to go except that we knew we would find a new home closer to our aging ailing parents, a place affordable enough to be mortgage free and a place with abundant nature nearby. After two months of homelessness in our tiny Trillium travel trailer with two cats and a dog, we found a home that fit all three criteria.
Living in a 13 foot trailer with 2 cats and a dog during a pandemic was a little challenging.
And now each day, our commute to ‘work’ involves walks through parkland forest where beaver, muskrat, waterfowl, deer, skunks, porcupines, eagles, gulls, owls, songbirds, coyotes, weasels, snakes, salamanders, bats, and dragonflies reveal themselves. No matter how bad things get in our human lives (and there has been plenty this year), our nature walks leave us feeling whole and rejuvenated ready to rebound to challenges presented. Without nature our coping strategies would have been severely tested.
Our new backyard.
Most people do not need as much nature as we do, but almost everyone needs some connection. The good news about the pandemic is that many people now work from home. The hours they used to spend commuting on crowded freeways are now spent outside in parks, pathways and natural areas in their town or city. Nothing like a little pandemic to reset our values – now maybe we can tackle that other wee challenge… the climate crisis!
A few of our new neighbours.
